Hey folks, Harry here with the latest from the former Entertainment Tonight Camera Dude... ED BURNS... Personally, I'm not a real Ed Burns fan... It's something about his voice that grates me... Also, thus far his personal films seem to rehash material that we've seen covered time and time again... sometimes better, often times worse... but it is the type of material that bores me. However, I'm always hopeful that a filmmaker grows over time and with opportunity, and his films aren't terrible... merely adequate... So I return again and again hoping that he can make magic... This is a very early screening and there can be radical changes before this film hits the market... read on...
Harry,
I recently caught a test screening of Edward Burns' new flic with Heather Graham, and Stanley Tucci, SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK. And of course Burns' himself plays one of the leads , on the heels of his recent 'actor guy' outing "15 Minutes."
"New York" is more of the same from the guy who brought us "The Brothers McMullen" and unfortunately the film seems to be rehashing the same ground that "Brothers" and his sophmore effort "She's the One," walked over. Burns also repeats a mistake made in both previous films: He casts his current girlfriend as the romantic lead. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with Heather Graham, just to say that Burns directs his girlfriends terribly. (Maxine Bahns in the previous two.) Graham suffices as the innocent wife who gets screwed over by Tucci, who is his generally fine self (in a scumbag kind of way).
The film also stars David Krumholtz and Brittney Murhpy and the film begins with a whirlwind series of on-the-street interviews with each person as though they were part of a documentary on romance. The camera styles follow suit and like traffic, though not as stylish, bounce and weave their way around the characters. There are several funny moments, but the same plot points that turn up in other Burns films turn up here as well. Burns has a fixation with romantic cheating. Combine his films and you have a college prep course on infidelity.
The one fresh plot point that struck me as I watched the film come to a close was the 'having children' subplot. In the opening scene Burns' breaks up with his girlfriend: She says 'I never want to have kids' or some such thing and apparently Burns' character needs to have kids one day. Anyway, I kept wondering what the hell that scene was about.
Spoiler:
End of the flick, Burns is romantically linked to a woman played by Rosario Dawson. She finds out she's pregnant and the ironic twist? She goes to tell him about it, thinks he will be upset and chickens out, running away. He never finds out. I loved that.
Beyond that the movie drivels along about such and such and we're left with a second rate Woody Allen rehashing that's clever in areas and dull in others.
Silence
