It’s Midnight in Paris, do you know where your rhinoplasty surgeon is?

Because if you do, you should tell Owen Wilson. It’s disturbing to stare at his crooked schnoz blown up to 5 feet on a movie screen for an hour and a half.

This is a review (of sorts) of Midnight in Paris, the new film from Woody Allen. I guess he stopped banging his ex-wife’s adopted daughter long enough to make a film, and I saw it tonight. I don’t have enough skill to review it without spoilers, so be warned- if you read this, I will likely ruin the surprises in the plot for you. Still with me? Good, who cares about a spoiled plot anyway?

If I could sum this movie up in a phrase, I’d say it’s the weirdest remake of Hot Tub Time Machine I’ve ever seen. This movie starts off slow. Very, very slow. I almost left after about 15 minutes, because NOTHING HAD HAPPENED. The characters are mostly annoying, and Owen Wilson is stuck doing a Woody Allen impression for the length of the movie. There is a know-it-all character that we’re supposed to believe is charismatic and somehow has beautiful women crushing on him- quite frankly, speaking as a know-it-all, I’ve learned that no women want men like that.

After some boring scenes that do nothing but show off the beauty of Paris, Owen Wilson stumbles across a way to travel back in time to the 1920s. This is an era in Paris where apparently Picasso, Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Matise, Man Ray, and Dali all hang out with one another. The actors that portray these historic figures all do a fine job, and they are really the only interesting things in the movie. Especially good was Corey Stoll as Hemingway. He captured the essence of a man’s man in a way that I haven’t seen done since back when Clint Eastwood still had a penis (i.e. before he made The Bridges of Madison County).

Adrian Brody is a horrible actor, but he does OK as Dali- Woody Allen’s best writing in the film came in the dialog for he and Hemingway, and I’m not sure it was intended, but Dali’s obsession with rhinos while talking to Owen Wilson was fitting. This is another movie where Owen Wilson has a great chance to explain that disturbing nose of his- Hemingway asks him if he boxes, and he could have said, “Yes, but I broke my nose so I don’t anymore,” or something to that effect. Instead, we’re asked to believe that his nose just naturally looks like that, and I refuse to do so.

Since Owen Wilson is from the future, he knows all about these persons, and becomes fast friends with them. Never mind that he’s an insufferable bore, but I guess they liked having him around since he was in no danger of ever being more interesting than they. The movie shows Owen Wilson making numerous trips back in time, where he decides to cheat on his fiance with a beautiful artist’s model (Marion Cotillard, pictured), and I guess if cheating happens before you or your partner were born, then it’s OK.

At points this movie was so dull and boring that I expected Natalie Portman to show up. Apparently I missed all the good stuff when I had to go to the bathroom about halfway through, because when I got back and asked my friend Glickman what I missed, he tells me there was a cool scene with robots, explosions, and Pamela Anderson topless. Oh, and Banksy showed up and took off his mask. Damn, I would have liked to have seen that.

The time travel got stale after a while, and I was able to predict when Toulouse-Lautrec was going to make an appearance. I guess Owen Wilson learned some big life lesson and decided to dump his fiance (who apparently hooked up with the know-it-all, despite the fact that he was with her best friend- what a whore.) But instead of going back in time again, he decides to live in Paris in the present, and the movie missed a golden opportunity. The character he decides to try to hook up with as the credits rolled could have been played in a dual role as the woman from the 20s with which he fell in love. That would have been a nice touch to tie the two eras together, but what the hell do I know?

If you need to have a numeric scale on a review, I’ll rate this on the height of famous landmarks. Ranging from the Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt (203 feet) to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (2717 feet), this movie comes in as the Lincoln Cathedral in England (525 feet), far short of the Eiffel Tower (986 feet).