Magic in the Moonlight

Woody Allen continues his Western European tour of pretty sunsets with Magic in the Moonlight, yet another in his now two-decade-long series of mediocre gimmick comedies. After dabbling in hypnotism (Curse of the Jade Scorpion), hysterical blindness (Hollywood Ending), ghosts (Scoop), fortune-telling (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) and time travel (Midnight in Paris), Allen's latest concerns a snobbish magician (Colin Firth) attempting to expose a button-nosed American mystic (Emma Stone). The problem is not that such supernatural gimmickry is beneath Allen—classics like Sleeper and The Purple Rose of Cairo are as high-concept as they come—but that it's just window dressing for another of Allen's wafer-thin, low-pulse drawing-room comedies. At least Allen's script serves his stars well—Stone is so faithful to the page that she rarely indulges in her usual cutesy, eye-crinkling mannerisms, while Firth gets to show a rarely seen testy cynicism.