Stuart is a having a mid-life crisis. Desperate for something more in life, he tags along on his best friend's family vacation to Paris - then proposes to his friend's 26-year-old daughter, Rosalind, while standing under the Eiffel Tower.
The film is yet another ode to the restorative magic of wine country sunshine, which apparently also has the power to expose the story's egregious midlife-crisis clichés.
While Under the Eiffel Tower hits every genre cliche in the book, the film is able to overcome this due to the chemistry betweenMatt Walsh and Judith Godrche.
Under the Eiffel Tower is sandwiched so tightly between a prologue that doesn't care and an epilogue too worn out to stick the landing that it almost doesn't get to be a movie at all.
Like many of the countless number of glasses of wine consumed by the characters throughout, it goes down easy and leaves a pleasant, if ultimately short-lived, afterglow.
Under the Eiffel Tower works better as comedy than drama, and feels more like fantasy than romance. But it also has a sweetness that's impossible to entirely resist.
A familiar setting yields a modestly fresh romantic comedy that finds some character-driven charm when its clumsy narrative contrivances stay out of the way.
