I think the worst part of romance is the assumption that it’s happening rather than showing the actions that yield a spark. I thought this could only happen with careless filmmakers and phone-it-in actors, but hey! Emma Stone and Colin Firth? Hell, yes, they know romance. Woody Allen has been making romances for decades. His last one was so good you’ll tolerate Owen Wilson. That was just three years ago.
The year is 1928, which is probably just an excuse to get Emma Stone to dress like a flapper, drive a vintage auto and have Colin Firth pose as Wei Ling Soo, a skilled illusionist from the mysterious Orient. It’s a throwback to a time when racism was endearing. Colin is actually playing Stanley Crawford playing Wei Ling Soo. Stanley is an insufferable know-it-all who gets more jollies by foiling second-rate con artists than creating his own illusions. One night after a performance, his old buddy Howard (Simon McBurney) comes with a plea to out a successful psychic (Stone). Stanley is almost giddy at the prospect of being an ass.
And ass gets right to the end of it; Colin does almost nothing to recommend himself to a woman, any woman. He comes to the collective estate where all wealthy people hung out in the 20s and follows Emma around like a groupie … except he isn’t a groupie, he’s a critic. And one set on being critical. This is like that “how hard is it to be a hockey 
goalie?” joke: “what if whenever you screwed up at work, a red light turned on, thunderous music started playing and thousands of people started yelling at you?”
And we know exactly where this is going, of course, which makes the foreplay all the worse. Even a moment in which the pair are stuck in a planetarium to get out of a rainstorm is sadly muted because of Stanley’s stiffness.
Oh, and then there’s this: Colin Firth is 53, Emma Stone is 25, Amanda Bynes is 27. Amanda isn’t in this film, but she played Firth’s daughter in What a Girl Wants. Then she played Emma Stone’s high school classmate in Easy A. That was 2010. This decade. A decade that hasn’t seen the half-way point yet. This matching of Stone and Firth? Um, a little ew there, Woody. And then I think about Firth being such an excruciating popinjay (look, I’m not making this up – I saw Magic in the Moonlight with a good friend who doubles as the Colin Firth fan club and even she found him wanting), which made me wonder if Woody thinks that December can get away with anything when he dates May. Personally, I’d think the threshhold should rise, not fall, if you’re dating out of your age class.
Look, bottom line is Woody’s done better, Colin’s done better, Stone’s done better. Magic in the Moonlight is cute in small parts, but probably won’t rank among Woody Allen’s top 25 films; it might make honorable mention.
♪Inside my living room
Gonna be with you
And check out my surround sound
You think that I will break
All fall back
On my one-star mound
Boring credits are his trademark, trademark
And the “Magic” is quite a lark
But this film is a bit stark
You can try to convince
Show me ways I will wince
But you know, yes you know
That I can’t pan the Moonlight
True, it has worth
Check out Stone and Firth
No matter what goes, I
Can’t pan the Moonlight♫
Rated PG-13, 97 Minutes
D: Woody Allen
W: Woody Allen
Genre: Romance as imagined by people who don’t have to work for it
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Great grandparents
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Skeptics
♪ Parody inspired by “Can’t Fight the Moonlight”
