Nathan Dodge
One Too Many
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Perhaps your prior knowledge of Wilson also contributed to your dissatisfaction with him in the role.
As far as I am aware this is the very first film I have seen with Owen Wilson in it so I had no preconceptions. To me the character seemed like a dreamer who was almost obsessively interested in the past (after all nostalgia is a form of dreaming) so his knowledge of it didn't surprise me at all. In fact, I thought Allen made sure that Gil actually lacked quite a bit of knowledge - the Paul character always seems to know more than Gil, much to Gil's chagrin, and we're happy when Gil, having learned in the past a detail about one of Picasso's painting, is finally able to outsmart Paul...
Same here. I'd only been vaguely aware of Wilson from his roles in The Cable Guy and Starsky and Hutch and had no opinion of him as an actor one way or another, other than the fact that his resume looked like several poor artistic choices. Somehow, I don't think the audience that watches a Woody Allen film is the same rabble that rushes to see Drillbit Taylor, so he's probably a surprise to many who saw him in Midnight In Paris; he was to me, that's for sure.
I think I may have been the first to posit that the movie's protagonist is not a terribly believable character, and I stand by it. Are there examples in the world of people with limited formal education who set about to educate themselves? Absolutely. Groucho Marx was just such a person.
And I don't think anyone's saying Gil had to be a literature whiz with model career/education -- I'm certainly not -- but somewhere in between that and the two-dimensional (at best) quick sketch that we ended up with would been preferable.
skyvue, you're selling both the character and less-than-PH.D-type people short. I've already mentioned in my long, rambling response earlier in this thread (that no one's read) that Woody Allen himself is a college dropout with extensive interest and knowledge of literature and the arts, so why can't an Allen character have the same? In the movie, we already know that he's a successful "hack" screenwriter who's done well despite his lack of *formal* education.
The overachieving but undereducated character has been used before in Woody's movies and not just with the Allen protagonist, but supporting characters, too. Like in Manhattan Murder Mystery: Mr. House says of Brown University--"Nice color." He never attended college, yet runs a movie theater and loves opera and film.
Once again referring to my ramblefest, "superior" actors Kenneth Branagh and Edward Norton actually pale in comparison to Owen Wilson in that Wilson comes up with a variation of the Allen protaganist whereas Branagh and Norton are merely aping the Allen persona and emerging as limp caricatures. At least give Wilson credit for doing a better job than those otherwise better actors. Funny that the guy who you've pigeonholed as a dimwit fares better than two Oscar nominees...at least IMO.