Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

I think I wrote before that if you've seen a movie by Woody Allen, you've seen them all, or to not sound that mean, at least a part of each of them. So, that's why I've never liked much Woody Allen = it just seemed boring. There are just two categories - romantic comedies or dramas with some hint of romance. But either my taste got "softened" by my age, or I started finding also some which have a slightly different nuance in the extremely prolific repertoire of the aforementioned (after all, at one movie per year it's actually hard I guess to find variation). "Magic in the Moonlight" is one of these more fortunate case, or at least this is what the trailer suggests...

Sometime in the 1920s: Stanley is a well-known magician, going with Wei Ling Soo as stage name, who besides the artistic career also formed a reputation of debunking fake mediums. So, he cannot resist the invitation of a fellow magician, old childhood friend, who asks him to investigate Sophie, a young lady posing as able to talk to spirits, who infiltrated into a rich family somewhere in South of France, making them believe she's the only way to contact the late head of the house. That's the starting point, and it doesn't sound bad at all.

The movie's part of the comedy area of Woody Allen, and it obviously keeps a lot of the specific elements = the characters construction, dialogues, etc. However, the context that's slightly more exotic and the location elements that add to the general feeling making it look a bit more like something by Alexander Payne ("Sideways", "Descendants"), give the movie some originality, enough to make it look different than just another episode of an anthology series. It's not something to stir strong laughs, but it has its humor, and even though it doesn't try to rival with Agatha Christie on keeping the mystery = you get quite quickly the answer on "who's the killer" in the story, it still doesn't lose you. That's because you have something left - to see how the romance evolves in all the context (even though that's predictable too). Probably this is also the disappointing part, in the sense that you'll probably expect something more elaborate, not just the simplistic solution you're offered. But after all, it's a light movie, relaxing, and not trying more than that. Something for a vacation :) Just the opportunity to end my 2019 chapter with a: Happy Holidays! & hopefully a better new year to come ;)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5