Portions of Woody Allen’s 1996 film Everyone Says I Love You take place in Paris, including the scene in the closing moments that finds Allen’s character dancing with his ex-wife, played by Goldie Hawn, along the Seine. What starts as a simple, gentle little dance turns magical as Hawn’s character starts defying gravity, literally flying through the air in time to the music. Apparently there’s something about the City of Light that pushes through Allen’s cynicism to stir the whimsical romantic inside, the one who allows himself to believe that there are things that can happen outside the bounds of miserable reality.

That dreamer within is present in Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris. That doesn’t mean he’s complete lost the sense that magic can hold false promises. In fact, the film uses Allen’s conjured conceits to make the argument that nostalgia is wonderful but ultimately fruitless, a path towards shamefully ignoring the benefits of the here and now. It’s perhaps a measure of the city’s charmed pull that Allen still delivers his potentially bleak conclusion with a fairly uncharacteristic warmth, even installing a final plot turn that indicates a hopeful belief in kismet. The film has become Allen’s biggest success in years, and it’s not all that difficult to see why. Even though it’s awash in Allen’s usual filmmaking tics, it also adheres to well-worn patterns of modern romantic comedies, including stripping away any potentially complicated feelings about the main character’s emotional straying by making certain that his fiancée is gradually but decisively revealed to be a fairly terrible person. This is probably the closest Allen will ever come to making a Katherine Heigl movie.

Allen’s edge is also softened somewhat by the presence of Owen Wilson in that leading role. It winds up being an inspired partnership between actor and director. Wilson brings an ease to the film that Allen plays to, and the material is sharp enough that Wilson loses his ability to coast, a habit he indulges in too often. The two wind up matching up in such a way that they’re forced to set aside some of their creative habits, a welcome development on both sides. Wilson’s performance is more amiable than great (the one person is the film who does give a great performance is Alison Pill), but that actually suits the film.

For all the shocked praise bestowed upon the film when it debuted at Cannes, Midnight is Paris is a compromised work, cute but negligible. There’s some shagginess built into the story that sometimes works and sometimes sends scenes spinning off into a dusty corner like lost toys. By its very premise, the film teeters on the edge of being indulgent and Allen’s balance isn’t unerring. There’s splendid wit to be found, but it sometimes jockeys with an eager aesthete showiness for air. Nice as it is to see Allen deliver a light comedy with some level of accomplishment given the dire record he’s had in that genre in recent years, it would be even better if it exhibited the same concerted discipline of his best efforts.