Magic in the moonlight review

Spoilers


  I don't normally review two movies in one week but my mom wanted to see this movie, I owed her and I am moving next week so no movie review for that time while I settle in. Woody Allen is often called the king of romantic comedies with his crown jewel being Annie Hall (awesome movie go see it.) And even after Annie Hall has continued to make good movies such as Blue Jasmine and Midnight at Paris. Sad to say however this one is a bit of a stinker.


   If you want a shorter version of this review- go see Guardians of the galaxy, you'll have a much more fun time worth your dollar value.


  Magic in the moonlight is about a cynical, neurotic magician/ spiritualist debunker named Stanly (played by Colin Firth) is commissioned by his friend Howard to debunk Sophie Baker a claimed spiritualist. However Stanly after spending time with her he falls in love with her and starts to believe in her scam.


  Going in I read reviews for the movie that made it seemed pretty freaking terrible. However in the first twenty or so minutes it didn't feel that bad. I was felt very satisfied so far and started to believe critics I respected were going a little far to call this movie out right bad. Then after the first twenty minutes and until the very end of the movie I could see exactly how bad Magic in the moonlight was and it was the first time I ever wanted to walk out of the theater.


  It's so boring, it was so boring, It felt like an eternity had passed since the beginning of the movie to the very end. Heck in the third act I made an excuse to go to the bathroom and instead went to the screening of sex tape next to the screening of this movie and watched six minutes of that. Sex tape is a worse movie than Magic in the moonlight but at least it's still entertaining. I complained that Guardians of the galaxy was too fast paced despite being a two hour and one minute movie, but Magic in the moonlight is a ninety minute movie but was so slow paced I felt as though I was their for three hours.

  This along with Tammy is one of the worse written movies of 2014. While Tammy had a boring near nothing plot, Magic in the moonlight suffered from inconsistent characters and lapses in logic. Which is strange considering our main character is a cynical, realist who we are often told but never show to be a very logical guy. Stanly the guy Colin Firth plays switches beliefs on a dime and forgives way too easily for his character to be coherent.


   Firth's character is not the only thing about this movie. Firth himself is not that very good in this movie. He's a great actor and is an academy award winner but that doesn't show here. Woody Allen has been criticized for the fact that most of his male leads are all just Woody Allen stand ins and this is never more prevalent here. That's because Firth can't do neurotic or cynical and comes off more as sarcastic. His acting in this is very weird and almost unnatural as if Firth very uncomfortable in this role.


   Emma Stone as Sophie is fine and her character is one of the few consistent things in this movie but she adds nothing to this movie. The romantic chemistry between Firth and Stone is also not that great either, I never bought that they were in love and the film gave me no reason to suspect they were more than just friends. Firth had a fiancée' in this movie he left for Sophie but we never see her except for a minute at the beginning when she really should have been in more of this movie. In fact Firth's character seemed happier with her than with Stone's character.


  The movie's main theme is science versus magic but the movie never properly takes a stand in either side and it ends up making the plot of the movie very unfinished and while the movie's ending was very cute it left so many plot threads unresolved that I almost felt that the movie could have benefited from another hour even though I barely got through ninety minutes of the goddamn thing.




Overall I give this movie a 2/10- Inconsistent characters, sloppily written, completely unfinished and just long and boring.


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