Director: Marc Webb
Runtime: 88 Minutes
This is a coming of age movie that doesn't do much in the way of showing the character coming of age. It borrows from a slew of other cliche themed works such as The Graduate, Wonder Boys and Igby Goes Down but does nothing to separate itself from other similar works. Them movies are much more interesting and satisfying to watch, it seems as the writers were barely even trying when they wrote the screenplay for this movie as the dialogue feels so lazy and barebone.
Thomas Webb (Callum Turner), the son of a publisher and his artistic wife, has just graduated from college and is trying to find his place in the world. Moving from his parents' Upper West Side apartment to the Lower East Side, he befriends his neighbour W.F. (Jeff Bridges), a shambling alcoholic writer who dispenses worldly wisdom alongside healthy shots of whiskey. Thomas' world begins to shift when he discovers that his long-married father (Pierce Brosnan) is having an affair with a seductive younger woman (Kate Beckinsale). Determined to break up the relationship, Thomas ends up sleeping with his father's mistress, launching a chain of events that will change everything he thinks he knows about himself and his family.
Usually, in a coming of age movie, you don't really like the main character at the beginning of the movie and you slowly start to like them as they learn their wrongdoings throughout the movie. The biggest problem this movie has is making its main lead so unlikable, I hated how smug and confident he was with all of his actions. You're meant to dislike him at the beginning, but you're not meant to hate him so bad that you want to throw him out of a window. I never recovered from this feeling and unfortunately felt it throughout the whole movie. Everything seems so familiar, nothing feels original. Tone, dialogue, setting, music, plot, it all seems taken from better coming of age movies. Why does Jeff Bridges play the most cliche idea of a writer ever put to film, an alcoholic writer who seems to sit around every day waiting to give the main character some new advice. Because he plays such a cliche character, he's completely unrecognizable as a real individual. Despite all this, he is one of the few (maybe the only) characters that have a shred of emotion to them.
Clocking in at a short 88 minutes. The Only Living Boy In New York is as thin as it gets. None of the characters are developed beyond the script, and are downright lazy. The song selections don't help either, there never seems to be any real choice in using them beyond the sake of pulling at the audience's heartstrings. For example, The Graduate did this extremely well with the music starting chilly and adding layers of depth to make everything feel regretful.
"There's no such sophistication here, as confirmed when Bob Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" comes on the soundtrack after, ahem, Johanna starts seeing Thomas on the sly. That's The Only Living Boy in New York in a nutshell: high-quality parts recycled into a derivative whole that lands squarely on the nose". Quoted from The Hollywood Reporter which perfectly sums up the music in the movie perfectly. It's hard for me to really find anything good about this movie, the movie does look really nice. Although cliche, New York does make for a beautiful location to film at.
Overall, The Only Living Boy In New York isn't a good movie. It does nothing new to stand out in an already overflowing genre, barebone characters and a poor script does nothing to elevate this movie to at least average status. Jeff Bridges is entertaining but extremely unnecessary, the music feels cheap and slapped on, never truly following the flow of the movie. It does at least contain some good imagery and thankfully is only 88 minutes, so you won't be waiting long for the credits to roll.
