No Spark In This Magic (Movie Review: Magic In The Moonlight)

I always think even a bad Woody Allen movie is not  waste of time. He is one of my favorite filmmakers, and I always get him. I get his humour, I get what is trying to do, I respond to his movies. But I guess there has to be a first time, because I really did not like Magic In The Moonlight.  This movie stars Colin Firth as a famous magician who wears yellow face (I am not offended as it is done with humour) who gets invited to the French countryside to survey on a woman, Sophie Black (played by Emma Stone) who is suspected to be scamming a rich family by pretending to be a medium. It's a premise that never really got going for me, and even though both Stone and Firth have oodles of charm, their characters are so unlikeable (especially Firth's) that I lost interest in them early on. And even as their characters get romantically entangled, the spark never materialized. I never believed their romance, and the age difference between the two of them even add an ick factor. And here lies the big problem with the movie: most scenes are between the two of them, even though they are surrounded by interesting characters. A lot  of scenes got too "talky"  and as alluring as the French countryside was photographed, there just wan't enough there to interest me. Allen himself seems to be running out of ideas, as he recycles themes he has explored in previous movies. Maybe he needs to take a short break and regroup.