Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

Woody Allen's 2014 romance concerns a master illusionist, Stanley, played by Colin Firth, who is summoned to the French Riviera to debunk a clairvoyant. He performs onstage in yellowface as the Chinese conjurer Wei Ling Soo, a detail the film presents as period furniture and never examines. The Riviera is likewise a backdrop, all lavender and vintage motorcars, carrying no argument about anything. What occupies the running time is a debate between rationalism and spiritualism, conducted at length and with diminishing returns.

Emma Stone plays Sophie, the alleged medium, and the film asks her chiefly to be the object of a man's slow, grudging conversion to feeling. Critics at the time noted the twenty-eight year gap between the leads and found it awkward, which is a casting complaint and not a statement. The wealthy Catledge family receives a light ribbing as a mark for a con, though the film has no interest in money as a subject. There is no environmental conscience, no engagement with race, no queer presence, no attention to bodies or brains. The screenplay is talky, in the familiar manner, but the talk is about séances and telescopes.

The result, then, is an amiable trifle. The performances are fine. The plotting is formulaic, as nearly every review observed, and the whole enterprise sits comfortably in a register of nostalgic craftsmanship. It is the sort of picture that wants only to charm you for ninety-seven minutes and then release you, unimproved and unlectured. We classify it accordingly, with the sober regret of a sommelier presented a wine that is pleasant, correct, and entirely without incident.