"New York, I Love You" is the second installment in the "Cities of Love" anthology series (Shanghai, Rio and Jerusalem are also in the works). Like its predecessor, "Paris, je t'aime", the film is comprised of several short films, each shot by a different director and featuring an ensemble cast. Unlike the first film, however, it does little to inspire affection, either for its host city or for the people who live and love within it.
While not as synonymous with love as Paris, the city of New York is no less idealized and romanticized in popular culture. It should be no problem, then, to find some compelling stories of love in the Big Apple, right? Well, when one of the best sequences is delivered by Brett "Rush Hour" Ratner, you know you're in for a long night. Mr. Ratner and the dozen or so directors involved in "New York, I Love You" were given only two days each to shoot their stories with the requirement that they had to 1) be about love and 2) be set in a recognizable New York neighborhood. Under such constraints, one might expect the final result to be a bit wobbly, but it's surprising how amateurish and hackneyed many of the shorts appear to be. One might get better quality ― and more insight ― from a first-year NYU film student.
Mr. Ratner's short ― about a young high schooler (Anton Yelchin), obligated to take James Caan's wheelchair-bound daughter (Olivia Thirlby) to the prom ― fares well because it feels the most complete, but that's not saying much. Choked with cutesy-poo stories of young hipster love between the likes of Hayden Christensen/Rachel Bilson, Justin Bartha/Eva Amurri and Orlando Bloom/Christina Ricci, there's not much room for tales of any substance ― or any other viewpoint.
It's curious that, despite the widely varied backgrounds of those in the director pool, they almost uniformly chose to depict white, heterosexual, romantic love ― ignoring New York's rich cultural diversity and practically any other meaning of the word "love". Nor do the stories tend to feel particularly tied to New York as a city. The one exception might be Mira Nair's sequence featuring Irrfan Khan as a Jain diamond broker and Natalie Portman as his Hassidic customer meeting over a deal in the Diamond District. Though worlds apart, they find an unexpected and poignant connection through their strict religious beliefs.
Portman, it must be noted, makes her directorial debut with her own short about a single father and his daughter. Cloyingly sweet, it's one of the more clumsy and amateurish offerings in the bunch. A segment directed by her "The Other Boleyn Girl" co-star, Scarlett Johansson, ended up on the cutting room floor. Ouch.
Amid the dross there are a few bright spots worth noting: Ethan Hawke as a pick-up artist trying to convince Maggie Q to go home with him; Julie Christie, looking luminous in a Shekhar Kapur short about a retired opera singer; Allen Hughes' sexy, stylish segment featuring Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo as two strangers mulling over the consequences of their one-night stand.
The bright moments are much too few and far between, however. Other than referencing the fact that people here are forced to smoke outside, there is little here that feels New York-y. Even the transitional shots of the city are stereotypical and uninspired. Tepid, two-dimensional and decidedly homogenous, "New York, I Love You" is about as representative of the New York experience as a Statue of Liberty snow globe. And as romantic.
