Backstage, the arrogant performer is greeted by his good friend and fellow magician (though not as celebrated), Howard Burkan ( Simon Burney, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”), who informs Stanley of a young American mentalist who causing quite a buzz for herself in the South of France. In the late 1920s, we meet cantankerous magician Stanley Crawford ( Colin Firth) performing as Chinese conjuror Wei Ling Soo before an enraptured audience in a Berlin theater. His two leads are generally likable in everything they do, yet wind up flailing in Allen’s vacation mode, making this film another flat entry in his canon. Allen must have been too relaxed though when he came up with this dreadfully uninteresting screenplay. “Magic in the Moonlight”, which he wrote and directed, is a romantic comedy that takes place predominately in the French Riviera, surroundings that are accentuated in this easy-going tour along curvy roads nestled in beautiful mountainsides. Meaning: it’s clearly one of those films where Allen thought about where he’d like to vacation with his family first and a locations for another film second. Woody Allen’s latest annual output is one of his more obvious vacation movies.
Rating: PG-13 (for a brief suggestive moment, and smoking throughout)
Produced by: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum and Helen Robin
