Posted: 12/10/2001

Sidewalks of New York

(2001)

by Parama Chaudhury

Director-writer-actor Edward Burns gathers a fine ensemble in this homage to NYC.

A postcard from Manhattan, a love letter to the Big Apple, whatever this movie was supposed to be, in the post-September 11th world, it turned out to be little more than a collage of scenes from Woody Allen movies. My friend who went to the movie with me probably had the most accurate take on this: in a few years’ time, when we don’t live in New York any more, this may be a good nostalgia movie.

To be fair, I might have liked this movie a bit more had I seen it before September 11. And that’s not just because of the casual shot of the Twin Towers in the background, or because of the comment Heather Graham’s character makes about how we always talk about sex because, unlike our grandparents, we have no major problems. This comment just reasserts what the media have been remarking on for the last two months: the silliness of our lives before the terrorist attacks. By now, our reaction to observations like this is sheer boredom. But of course, the timing just worked out badly and there was little to be done about these direct September 11 effects.

The main problem, however, was that the director seemed to care so little about his characters. Maybe the terror attacks have made me more intolerant towards insipid movies, but how can you expect the audience to feel involved in a story about characters distinguished by only one trait? There’s the Trophy Wife, the Philandering Dentist, the Slutty Waitress, the Silly Young Man and so on. Why should we care about any of these paper dolls? It’s not like this is a concept movie: it’s just trying to tell us a story, and so if the story isn’t interesting, well, the movie isn’t either.

Then the inevitable Woody Allen comparison kicks in. Of course, the interview format (Husbands and Wives), the frequent shots of the brownstones around Washington Square (Annie Hall), the still of the young lovers framed by the Brooklyn Bridge (Manhattan) are classics, which the young director of a movie set in New York would be tempted to borrow from. The only difference is that Woody Allen invests in his characters, so that however fidgety, cynical and loser-like they are, we want to follow their story. The New York setting of his movies is also very important, because the city is an integral part of each character’s life and the director’s affection for this maddening city is obvious. Director Ed Burns’ take on relationships in the big city features neither of these two attractions. So we end up forgetting the movie the moment we leave the theater.

Stanley Tucci’s two-timing dentist is the only character who is somewhat entertaining and seems the tiniest bit three-dimensional, even as you recognize that he is the Woody Allen character in Manhattan. Heather Graham, as beautiful as she is, is a caricature of the enchanting Diane Keaton. A young Woody Allen-ish character shows up as a doorman-cum-rock star (David Krumholtz), and the chemistry he shares with a local waitress (Brittany Murphy) is almost cute. Unfortunately, we stop caring about them as soon as the initial curiosity about a new character fades away. Rosario Dawson’s Hispanic schoolteacher shows promise early on, but the development of her character unravels along the way.

Burns makes an effort to tell a hardheaded (but not cynical) love story set in a city known for many such stories, but while he doesn’t fall into the quagmire of happily-ever-after, he also just manages to skim the surface of the network of intersecting lives that he sets out to examine. The cinematography is largely unimaginative: Prince Street looks kind of cool, no matter how you photograph it, but it has no role in Burns’ story and might as well be part of a tourist spot shot by NYC & Co. The bottom line is that this movie is not bad, but it’s also not memorable. If you’ve never been to New York, the pictures of the city are very life-like, and so this might introduce you to the non-Statue of Liberty NYC. And if you used to live in New York, use this one to reminisce about Tompkins Square Park.

Parama Chaudhury is a graduate student, an ex-writing instructor and a budding freelance writer, based in New York City.

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