New York, I Love You

The second in a series of romantic anthology films that are supposed to be literal love letters to famous cities around the world (the first film was set in Paris), New York, I Love You suffers from a curious problem - Very few of the nearly dozen directors who have contributed short films to the project actually seem to know anything about the city they're filming in. The few famous city locations that are used as backdrops (such as Central Park, or the Diamond District), are just that - backdrops. Many of the stories presented here could have taken place anywhere.

This movie desperately needed the touch of a director who is familiar in shooting in and about New York, such as Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese. They understand the city, and give us an authentic look at the people and its energy. This movie gives us stories that are cute, but again, could have taken place anywhere, and don't last long enough to make an impression. A good example is the film contributed by Brett Ratner (Rush Hour 3), where a teenage boy (Anton Yelchin) is dumped by his girlfriend just before the prom, so his boss at work (James Caan) hooks the kid up with his own teenage daughter (Olivia Thirlby), who is handicapped and in a wheelchair, but fortunately still able to help Yelchin's character lose his virginity that night in Central Park. They return the next morning, where there's a kind of funny little twist ending that I won't reveal, but that's literally the entire story right there. Many of the films run only around 3-5 minutes, so there's never enough time to get involved or to get too attached to the characters. It also makes the movie feel like it's constantly stopping and starting every couple minutes, with sometimes awkward lead ins to the next story.

The films are sometimes loosely connected, where a character from one film will pop up briefly in a different one, but for the most part, they are stand alone entries. A few of the films are able to work on some level, despite how short they are. I liked the segment where Orlando Bloom plays a frustrated music composer who is given a seemingly impossible assignment by the person he's working for, and is helped along and develops a relationship with by a woman over the phone. There's also a funny short film where Ethan Hawke plays a man trying to pick a woman (Maggie Q) up on a street corner. There's are also nice sequences concerning Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo hooking up during a cab ride, and Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as an elderly couple taking a walk down the Brighton Beach boardwalk. This segment feels the most natural and unscripted of all the films, and is the only one where you get to feel a real connection between the characters. Wallach and Leachman come across as if they've been together and have been having similar conversations as the one we're listening to for years.

As with all anthology films, the quality of the segments are a mixed bag, and in New York, I Love You, the disappointing outnumbers the effective. So many of the segments never seem to lead anywhere, or are promising, but have disappointing pay offs. There's a segment involving Julie Christie as a depressed singer in a hotel, and Shia LaBeouf as a Russian bellhop who connects with her that never seems as effective as it could have been. A sequence concerning Natalie Portman as a Hasidic bride also never seems to go anywhere, and is really quite pointless. (Portman actually gets to direct a later sequence, which is stronger than the one she stars in.) But really, the main problem I had with this movie is that none of them truly touched me on an emotional level. While I enjoyed some of the films, I never felt a personal connection with them. I wanted there to be fewer segments, so that the ones that did work could have been fleshed out. Doing some research, I learned that there were more segments that were cut from the film, and will appear as extras on the DVD. I would have cut a few more, and lengthened some of the others.

But the real thing I couldn't get over is that the movie never feels like it's actually about the city it's set in. The stories are not actually about New York, and the people who inhabit them don't come across as New Yorkers to begin with. The film's mind set is too Hollywood. The filmmakers were more interested in capturing big name stars, rather than capturing the essence of the city itself. For a movie called New York, I Love You, that's the biggest flaw of all.

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