It's decent and a very easy, pleasant watch. There's really not a whole lot to complain about and Emma Stone is just lovely and in her element here as she always is - hands down my favorite part of the movie. It just feels very slight and ultimately comes off as a tad forgettable though, which is a shame considering how great Blue Jasmine was last year. It's certainly not awful like To Rome With Love though at least. B-

Ultra-prolific writer and director Woody Allen, creator of many of the finest American comedies and dramas of the last four decades, creates perhaps the most dire film of his oeuvre with Magic in the Moonlight, a purported comic romance devoid of charm, excitement, humor, and interest. Colin Firth plays Stanley, a veteran magician and avowed cynic spirited by an old friend to the south of France to help reveal youthful psychic Sophie (Emma Stone) as a fraud. She has a powerful and rich family under her spell, providing them with supernatural advice regarding financial decisions and claiming to contact their deceased patriarch. Stanley is eager to deduce her secrets and declare her a con artist posing as a mystic, but finds it harder than expected as he, too, becomes entranced.

This is a fine concept, evocative of Houdini and his disdain for spiritualists, with many intriguing components (magic! romance! France!), yet the resulting film has no idea how to utilize it as it blunders and trips from the bland start to the profoundly misguided finish line. More than ever before, there is a sense Allen filmed the first draft of his script. The few ideas are stretched far too thin, scenes go in circles, and characters constantly refer to and explain the thesis (how to blend a pragmatic, even distrustful worldview with a bit of earnest belief in magic and romance) in a way so didactic and mechanical as to be insulting. And the Firth/Stone pairing is a hideous miscalculation. Their nonexistent chemistry never moves the needle, and he is downright creepy as he lusts after a co-star who can still play a high-school student. He truly registers as a type of horny father figure rather than a viable bedroom match. The fact Firth plays a fairly vile boor of a man who more than once refers to himself as a genius does not help, particularly as the fetching Stone's thinly developed Sophie fawns over him and sacrifices more and more of herself to win him over as he rolls his eyes and berates her with cruel faux-wit. (Though portrayed as a sap rendered a tad delusional by his wealthy upbringing, the Hamish Linklater character who functions as the romantic rival is much more charismatic.) It is borderline revolting, and perhaps a tad fascinating, how truly unconvincing this central love story is. To be honest, to even call is a love story is groan-inducing.

D

I enjoyed it. It is forgettable though, and the romantic angle wasn't really done that well.

dreadful

Inoffensive but bland to an almost shocking degree, Magic in the Moonlight represents one of Woody Allen's most colorless offerings to date. It's a shame, considering the talented cast and beautiful scenery. Colin Firth and Emma Stone are both appealing and very likable as usual, however, despite having next to no chemistry with each other. C

Colin Firth is anything but appealing in this film.

It's light and fun and Stone and Firth were very good together. Nothing great, but charming.

7/10 ( B )

All though the romantic element wasn't there at all I thought Firth was the standout here. I thought he gave a good performance even though he wasn't given much to work with. Emma Stone, who is one of my favorites, wasn't good at all though. The movie is incredibly bland and forgettable. It's also nice to look at but there just isn't much to it.

C

I really enjoyed it, then again I do tend to favor Woody's lighter films such as this. Stone and Firth work great off each other and it is a very funny little film.

Wonderful. A really fun cat and mouse movie in addition to its themes. Yes its exposition about its themes is a little over the top, but I like the idea anyways of rationality winning when it comes to the seer plot, but magic winning in terms of romance. Stone is good but Colin Firth is the real shining performance, pulling off a pretty thin tightrope of a pompous erratic stuck in his time Brit but still showing the character's heart in like, his eyes twitching in reaction and stuff. This also makes the best visual use of its locale of his recent group of his European films. One of his best in 2000+ for me