Midnight in Paris and The Purple Rose of Cairo

Midnight in Paris was charming, entertaining, and worth seeing.  Every street shot is  unsurprisingly gorgeous and if you romanticize Paris the way I do, you'll get swept up in momentary Francophilia and briefly consider an apartment swap on AirBandB.com.    But to me, it didn't reach the caliber of  The Purple Rose of Cairo, one of Woody Allen's earlier films with somewhat similar escapist and fantastical elements (...and one of my all time favorite movies!).  Set in the Depression Era, the tonality of The Purple Rose of Cairo is tinged with more melancholy and the characters are more desperate, and to me the story is  more complex and emotionally engaging. Whereas in Midnight in Paris, the feeling is more light-hearted. The characters live in a world of the "worried well", so watching Owen Wilson fret over  his literary ambitions and chosen Hollywood vocation seems trivial, yet funny and compelling.  Some of the casting and one-liners are completely inspired (i.e. Adrian Brody, as Dali and the guy who played Hemmingway), but I wasn't totally immersed in the world or consequences bourgeois characters faced while experiencing "la vie en rose". Still....check it out, it's gotta be better than all the sequels that are hitting the screens...