new york, I love you

Really. I do. Do you know who I don't love? Everyone behind the abomination that is "New York, I Love You." It was horrific. There were causalities (mainly our wallets.) We suffered extreme losses, time, money, respect. After "Paris Je t'aime", I thought how a movie about New York love would be wonderful. As a native New Yorker I was genuinely offended. This was most definitely not the New York I know and love. According to this movie everyone in New York smokes. Everyone. Not only do we all smoke, but we always get into a taken cabs. We only go on the subway to think about our recent one-night stands (where virtually, Drea de Matteo is literally the only person in the subway car rethinking her passionate night with a total stranger.) We're not Chinese if we don't own a laundromat. New York apparently has no homosexual love stories, or for that matter any black or Latina women. And bottom line, New Yorkers are just plain weird.

LIES. The movie is full of LIES. It was poorly edited. One of my least favorite story lines (there is heavy competition, since they all are my least favorites.) about a struggling, drug addled artist who goes to Chinatown. There he sees the Chinese herbalist, she's young, she's beautiful, she's his muse. He takes her image in his head, goes to the corner of Henry street and sits in a restaurant. While he eats, he takes a napkin and using soy sauce outlines her face...leaving her almond eyes empty. We now have a Chinese girl drawn in soy sauce...without eyes. He practically stalks her...and prepositions her; he wants her to be his model. She hesitates. He is so inspired that he pops some pills, downs it with Jack Daniels and dies. She goes to find him....but he's dead. She finds her creepy soy sauced portrait, takes a photo of her eyes and PASTES them on the empty outline and stares smugly at it. It is creepy. It is weird. It is gross.

There is a woman who is shown constantly through the movie filming New York on her camcorder. A fake paraplegic who has sex with an (adorable) Anton Yelchin while hanging from a tree (let's not ask questions here...I was beyond disturbed.) A Hasidic Jew & Hindu love story (where she pictures him with the curls and the hat, and he sees her in a wedding sari. Really Mira Nair, really?!) A game of cat and mouse between Rachel Bilson, Hayden Christensen & Andy Garcia (whose screen time gave me a headache because it made ZERO sense.) The strange Julie Christie and Shia LaBeouf dynamic (honestly...what was that ABOUT?) Shia LaBeouf asks her if she is cold...proceeds to tell her he will close the windows...and PLOP, he falls to his death. We cut to a scene of him BLEEDING on the pavement (and why was he crippled?) And let's not forget the struggling writer trying to pick up a hooker. It was discombobulated. It was horrendous. It was NOT my New York. There was so much potential to do something good. To really show the city, but they failed to capture the essence of New York and made us seem like crazies who smoke three packs a day.

The only thing that was adorable was the old couple. Their banter was sharp and romantic. Their celebration of their 63rd wedding anniversary while trying to get to the Coney Island boardwalk was the best thing about this abysmal movie.

Damn false advertising! Never again. I don't need a movie to show me. New York, I will always love you.