By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Marc Webb
Cast: Callum Turner, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, Kiersey Clemons, Tate Donovan, Wallace Shawn, Debi Mazar and Jeff Bridges.
Rating: Poor.
Director Marc Webb, brings his second feature of 2017 with “The Only Living Boy in New York” and this movie was everything but entertaining.
Set in New York, the movie tells the story of Thomas Webb (Callum Turner) a recently young college graduate who goes comes back after a long trip.
In that time he will meet his new neighbor W.F. Gerald (Jeff Bridges) an alcoholic writer who becomes a mentor for Thomas.
One day Thomas with his best friend Mimi (Kiersey Clemons) spot Thoma´s father Ethan (Pierce Brosnan) with a young and sexy attractive woman named Johanna (Kate Beckinsale).
Shocked for the fact that his father started an affair, Thomas will do anything to prevent this.
The real problem begins when Thomas starts to have an attraction towards Johanna and the feeling begins to be mutual.
Now Thomas will have to be discrete about this relationship with his father´s mistress before he finds out or else he will be in thin ice.
The major problem with “The Only Living Boy In New York” was the screenplay written by Allan Loeb who I still feel that writing the same movies filled with clichés over and over again.
He did this with “Collateral Beauty” last year, he did it again with “The Space Between Us” and now he did it here and honestly I´m getting tired about his style.
I´m aware that I am being very hard but this type of storyline doesn´t work and doesn´t make any sense.
The beginning of the film with Jeff Bridge´s voiceover doesn´t make any sense at all and he practically is narrating the movie.
This is not the way to use this tool and the filmmakers failed and big time with this movie.
Marc Webb´s direction was all over the place and I feel that he had an A List Cast in his disposal and did not get out the best of his actors.
The characters of this film were too vague and they lacked of depth and heart.
This movie was so predictable from beginning to end that from the first act until the end of the film I knew exactly what was going to happen
I feel that the idea had huge potential but it was neither well written and executed and the results speak for itself.
In a certain way I felt that this movie could have had a better direction but I was wrong and I can say that this is so far Marc Webb´s weakest movie of his career.
He brought at the beginning of the year “Gifted”, which I considered a sweet and touching movie.
This film is light years away and I was very disappointed since I enjoyed “500 Days of Summer” and “Gifted” both film directed by Webb.
If you don´t know “The Only Living Boy In New York” is also the title of a “Simon and Garfunkel” song that it´s way better than this film.
“The Only Living Boy In New York” is one of the most disappointing films and I cannot recommend it.