When you think "time travel movie," chances are you're thinking of a Delorean revving up to 88 miles per hour, a fantastical H.G. Wells-style machine, or maybe Tony Stark inventing something that will let superheroes save the day by saving yesterday. You're probably not thinking of a nebbish writer meandering down a Paris street late at night. And yet Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which turns 15 years old today, deserves to be recognized as one of the great time travel movies. A work of quaint fantasy rather than science fiction, Midnight in Paris nevertheless uses some established time travel tropes to create a cozy (and quietly devastating) metaphor for escapist nostalgia.
Owen Wilson stars as Gil Pender, a successful, unfulfilled screenwriter who could correctly be described as a Woody Allen-type. (Allen wrote and directed the 2011 film; he doesn't appear in it himself.) Gil is in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) for their honeymoon, though it's clear almost from the jump that the two are not right for one another. He's a disillusioned romantic who is probably a little frustrating at times; she's a materialist with no patience for his flights of fancy. One night, when he gets lost while taking a late stroll rather than accompany Inez to dance with an old college friend of hers, a Peugeot taxi straight out of the 1920s pulls up, and its occupants beckon Gil to get in.
