After the perfectly enjoyable melodrama “Gifted” earlier this year, director Marc Webb returns with “The Only Living Boy in New
York,” a coming-of-age narrative that cobbles together its story from a
collection of familiar elements and tropes, then renders them completely
ineffective in the process.
Following
the lives of well-to-do Manhattan writers, artists, and various cultural elite,
“Only Living Boy” is filled to the brim with self-consciously deployed literary
references. But the script by Allan Loeb (“Collateral Beauty”) has an inability
to understand how smart people talk to one another; even a fantastically
talented cast can’t make the words convincing.
Thomas Webb
(Callum Turner, “Green Room”) is a 20-something recent graduate entering the
malaise of post-college life. An aspiring writer, he’s self-conscious about leading what he believes has thus far been a boring,
conventional life. He’s afraid that he won’t have enough material to draw upon
once he starts creating stories.
Thomas has
also been chasing after his friend Mimi (Kiersey Clemons, “Dope”) ever since
they spent a night together. But she’s decided they’re better as friends, and
Thomas has trouble accepting that.
Enter
Thomas’s mysterious new upstairs neighbor, W.F. (Jeff Bridges), who immediately
begins dispensing life wisdom and offering to help Thomas convince Mimi to
sleep with him again. Aside from coming across as a complete creep, W.F.
becomes Thomas’s mentor and confidante, taking a vested interest in the boy for
reasons that only gradually become clear. He’s also an alcoholic, but in that
charming way that only writers in movies are able to be. Bridges also delivers
cloying voiceover throughout the story, cluing us into the inner feelings of
each character we meet.
Eventually
Thomas learns that his publisher father (Pierce Brosnan) is cheating on his
fragile, bipolar mother (Cynthia Nixon) with one of his employees, Johanna
(Kate Beckinsale). Thomas initially sets out to confront Johanna, but can’t
bring himself to say anything to her and settles for following her around the
city. Eventually they do speak and as the accusations begin to fly, she starts
by out calling him a child who doesn’t understand how the world works — then she
ends up sleeping with him … because he’s just so naturally irresistible, you
see.
As the two
enter into their own affair, Thomas seems to be acting out of his own tension
with his father, who we learn became a publisher when he couldn’t cut it as a
writer himself.
“The Only
Living Boy in New York” clearly wants to be “The Graduate,” and not just
because of the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack. It also occasionally desires to
be a Woody Allen film, but lacks any of the wit Allen brings to even his worst
films.
The biggest
problem here is that the film wants the audience to see Thomas as a good guy at
heart, then doesn’t bother to present us with any evidence whatsoever to back
that up. Everyone around Thomas can’t stop telling him how funny and clever his
observations are; that he’s such a kind, genuine person, and just how goddamn
wonderful he is. But we don’t see any of that.
It’s
possible to tell stories about privileged white people in compelling ways, but
Loeb is clearly unfamiliar with what any those ways might be. None of the
female characters have any sort of interior lives of their own, and they seem
to exist to guide the men around them into having revelations about their
lives.
Kiersey Clemons
was a vibrant presence in “Dope” and she continues to be, even when playing a
character the script can’t be bothered to try and understand. “Love and
Friendship” recently reminded us how wonderful Beckinsale can be, but here
she’s saddled with a character whose actions don’t make a lick of sense.
The film not
only wastes the talents of its main cast, but squanders charming performers
like Tate Donovan, Wallace Shawn, Anh Duong, and Debi Mazar, who make one scene
appearances and then disappear completely. But not before they all sit around
having conversations about how New York City has lost its soul. (Insert eye
roll here.)
There are
any number of characters in the story who might make an interesting center to a
movie, but the creators don’t have enough imagination to put anything other
than a bland, rich, white guy at the center of the world.
Because this
is an Allan Loeb script, there have to be some late in the game twists to
provide the sense that there’s a Deep Meaning in the randomness of life. It
didn’t work when Loeb tried it in “Collateral Beauty” and it doesn’t work here.
At least “Collateral Beauty” had the batshit insane factor working for it. “The
Only Living Boy on New York” ends up as bland and boring as its protagonist.
This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2017.
