"New York, I Love You" aims to capture the city's cosmopolitan heart with 10 separate stories by 10 different directors.
It's an idea executed with some success in "Paris, je t'aime" a few years ago and emulated here with some pretty good talent - Mira Nair, Shekar Kapur and Allen Hughes. Brett Ratner also contributes a segment.
OK, that's a cheap shot at poor Brett. When you've sat through as many X-Men movies as I have, you begin to carry a grudge.
Truth be told Ratner's contribution isn't bad - it features Anton Yelchin as a nerdy high school kid who agrees to take his pharmacist's daughter (Olivia Thirlby) to the prom, and is disconcerted to find that she's confined to a wheelchair.
It turns out to be, well, an affair to remember. Ratner's segment has an element of whimsy and unpredictability, attributes that it shares with many of the other segments, giving "New York I Love You" some unifying thread (along with ubiquitous chain smoking), even though the tone of the stories varies greatly.
Too greatly at times. Kapur's contribution is a borderline ghost story about a suicidal opera singer (Julie Christie) making elaborate plans to end her life at an old hotel, interrupted by a strange encounter with a deformed bellhop (Shia LaBeouf, whose Slavic accent is also a little deformed).
"New York, I Love You" works better when it's less spectral, more earthy - Nair's segment contains a nice cross-cultural back and forth over the price of diamonds between an orthodox Jew (Natalie Portman) and an Indian diamond merchant, played by Irfan Khan, who's stolen more scenes with modesty than most actors do with ego.
The segment adds to the movie's salute to the city's multi-national, multi-ethnic character; others stories underscore it's role as a place of romantic possibility (segments featuring Robin Wright Penn and Chris Cooper) even long-term commitment (Cloris Leachman, Eli Wallach).
The movie has its ups and down. I counted a few more ups, and it's nice to see a movie that doesn't mention 9/11, its somewhere in the background, behind a city that has gone back to being its open, vibrant, international self.
