Things I Learned From Movie X:
New York, I Love You
By Edwin Davies
June 15, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Yes, rather than being the celebration that the Big Apple deserved, New York, I Love You wound up being a sad, pathetic little disappointment that even those skinny, jean-wearing little hipsters in Williamsburg would be loathe to enjoy, even ironically. A turgid collection of a miserable short films supposedly about love, the project took wasted a lot of talent both on and off-screen to tell stories which not only weren't all that interesting, but perversely also didn't feel like they were set in New York. Apart from identifiable landmarks, every short feels weirdly anonymous, as if the people involved didn't actually have any interest in New York in the first place. Maybe they should have taken a leaf from LCD Soundsystem's book and renamed the film New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down. Regardless, there are lessons to be gleaned from New York, I Love You, but since you shouldn't subject yourself to the film, I will provide a helpful cheat-sheet.
I have entered a strange and terrifying new world, one in which left is right, up is down, and good is bad.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the directors whose work is on display in New York, I Love You is Brett Ratner, a man for whom the artistic value of his work has never been a chief concern, except in the case of the hard-hitting, gritty realism of his debut, the Chris Tucker-Charlie Sheen vehicle Money Talks, obviously. His short stars Anton Yelchin as a young man who gets dumped by his girlfriend (played by Blake Lively) on the eve of his high school prom. Despondent, he pours his heart out to his local pharmacist (James Caan), as any sane person would, and his pharmacist then pairs him up on a date with his daughter (Olivia Thirlby), because that's what pharmacists are known for. Or is that pimps? Anyway, it's some job that begins with a P. The big night comes and, uh-oh, it turns out the daughter is in a wheelchair! Regardless, they wind up having a great time together, and the story ends with the young Chekov having sex with the wheelchair girl against a tree, only to then discover that she isn't disabled at all (TWIST!), and is just a method actor preparing for a role.
So, to recap; it's a short film directed by Brett Ratner, it's a bawdy sex-comedy about a young man taking a girl in a wheelchair to prom against his will, and it ends with that same young man fucking that same girl against a tree. Yet it's the best short in the entire project. Maybe it's just down to the fact that it's a silly, slight story with no delusions of grandeur, so it stands out amongst the stultifying dull, pretentious ones that surround it, but Brett Ratner does the near-impossible of actually making a half-decent film. Let's all raise our glasses (go and get yourself a glass, I'll wait) and make a toast: To low expectations, have them and you will never be disappointed!
Yes, Natalie Portman, you like dancing. We get it!
As well as starring in a really quite diabolically bad short in which she plays an Orthodox Jew, possibly one as imagined by Eric Cartman, Natalie Portman also found time to make her directorial debut in New York, I Love You and her short is...actually, it's not that bad. She's not the next Spielberg or anything, and she doesn't display any particular flair or style in the way she writes and shoots, but her short is a well put together effort about a man (Carlos Acosta) taking his daughter out for a walk in Central Park. It's a perfectly fine, slightly overly mannered film that moves along nicely, then seems to resolve when the father has to give his daughter back to her mother at the end of their day together. Then, Portman goes nuts, and decides to add an interpretative dance sequence at the end, destroying all the subtle character work that the short had built upon in favour of a big, showy spectacle that practically screams the emotions of the character at the audience. It'd be like having Dustin Hoffman burst into a rousing rendition of "Cat's In The Cradle" at the end of Kramer vs. Kramer. Actually, that would have been kind of awesome. Wholly out of place, but awesome.
There are so many things in the world that I never knew I didn't want to see, ever...
And just one of them is Shia LaBeouf (urgh) playing an Eastern European (huh?) hunchback (wuh?!), yet New York, I Love You destroyed the Paradise that was a world in which I didn't know such a thing existed by actually including a short film based solely around that concept. Despite also starring Julie Christie and John Hurt, who should be able to balance out the presence of LaBeouf and his infinitely punchable face, the short is a crushing bore, and probably represents the nadir of the entire project, which is really saying something. Christie plays a famous actress who moves into a lavish hotel which only seems to employ a bellhop (Hurt), and a porter (LaBeouf), with whom she strikes up a friendship. They then proceed to have a series of increasingly tedious conversations about the nature of love whilst the audience sits in stunned paralysis, unable to look away as the horror onscreen unfolds. The short was one of the last works written by Anthony Minghella, who died as a result of complications from surgery before he had a chance to film it. Considering that the story ends with LaBeouf's character throwing himelf off the balcony of the hotel (gasp!) only for us to discover that, drumroll, he was dead all along (TWIST!), it might not be too much of a leap to assume that he wrote the script whilst he was dying on the operating table. You'd have to be suffering from severe blood loss to believe that isn't a godawful ending.