Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard in a scene from Midnight in Paris. (Roger Arpajou/Sony Pictures Classics)

With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen continues his European love affair by offering up a sloppy French kiss to the City of Lights. In nearly every Allen film, there is the requisite Allen surrogate. This time, it's Owen Wilson, portraying a self-hating Hollywood screenwriter and aspiring novelist named Gil. With his perpetually surprised demeanour, Wilson works well as Woody's voice, bringing a West Coast flair to his role as a bemused outsider.

Gil and his fiance, Inez (Canada's Rachel McAdams), are in Paris to meet her mother and father, who are in town for business. To increase Gil's discomfort, her old flame appears.

The intellectual Paul, played by Michael Sheen, is one of Allen's most amusing creations since the blowhard pontificating about Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall. Paul sprinkles "I believe" throughout his never-ending polemics on art history, while chiding Gil for being enamoured with the past.

His theme -- the dangers of nostalgia -- is a none-too-subtle set-up for what follows. From Zelig to Casino Royale to Sleeper, Allen's never been afraid to borrow from genres in his quest for laughs.

Here, Gil retreats for a midnight stroll and discovers a way to visit Paris in the 1920s. Gone are his prone-to-bickering fiance and her never-satisfied parents. Instead, he's hobnobbing with the Fitzgeralds and showing off his manuscript to none other than Gertrude Stein. Although Allen paints these icons with a broad brush, this is when Midnight in Paris springs to life.

Actors (from left) Marion Cotillard, Alison Pill and Owen Wilson with filmmaker Woody Allen. (Roger Arpajou/Sony Pictures Classics)

Corey Stroll steals the few scenes as a bull-headed Ernest Hemingway who speaks in slogans, not sentences. Adrien Brody appears too briefly as a hilarious Salvador Dali -- or Dah-LEE, as he pronounces it.

And there, beside a bug-eyed Pablo Picasso, is another lost soul: Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard. The fact that Gil looks like he just stepped out of a J.Crew catalogue doesn't seem to bother the 1920s gal. Soon, our romantic writer is faced with the timeless question: should he stay or should he go?

It's here that the story stumbles. McAdams is one of most effervescent actresses out there. But in this role -- a pampered princess who shrieks lines like "You always side with the help!" -- she's closer to a villain than a love interest. From the opening frame, we're given little reason why Gil is so smitten with her in the first place. If there was a spark, some flicker of warmth between the two, there might have been some tension as Gil weighs whether to give in to his time-travelling temptress. Instead, the false dilemma undercuts the story.

RATING: A sweet, somewhat trite story that's cute, but no classic, Midnight in Paris rates three slightly stale croissants out of five.