TheRetroCritic

It seems Woody Allen films these days either hit or miss with the critics. It's like it all depends on how good the holiday was with sunny Vicky Cristina Barcelona doing surprisingly well despite its lack of any lasting impact or depth. But Cassandra's Dream and its dreary London gloom? No thanks. Now comes Woody Allen's Paris holiday which starts off as an obvious love letter to the famously (read: cliched-ly) romantic city (minus the homeless) but which soon takes a welcome sci-fi turn almost elevating itself to Purple Rose Of Cairo -style surrealism. Sadly the film refuses to go any deeper than its key message making it more of a cute little idea than a heartbreaking, moving, important story. It's a welcome return to thinking-outside-the-box type films like Scoop in which the afterlife made an appearance. Here, spending midnight in Paris can literally transport you back to a simpler time: the 1920's. Where Ernest Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds and Picasso a

I wonder how many kids growing up reading Dr Seuss' Cat In The Hat ever pictured an overweight Alec Baldwin holding a six-pack of beer in the story let alone Mike Myers in cat drag! Oh well... Initially the film looks appropriately quirky and cartoonish but soon we realise that the story mostly takes place in a living room so goodbye slick CGI suburbia, hello boring pastel-coloured...indoors. Because that's what kids enjoy: Indoors. Anyway, you remember everything that didn't work in Ron Howard's The Grinch ? The noisy, chaotic direction, the messy musical numbers, the intrusive score, the erratic editing, the overacting... Yeah that's all back. The Grinch could be forgiven for being a Christmas movie and for having an ever entertaining Jim Carrey as the titular green grump. Here, however, we're given a rushed, dumb, predictable mess of a kids film with Mike Myers desperately trying to insert some jokes here and there and there's really no re