New Yorkers Hate New York, I Love You

Anthology has its moments, but only for generous critics
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 16, 2009 3:35 PM CDT

Not everyone hates New York, I Love You—Roger Ebert, for example, found the anthology a “jumble sale” containing “some nice discoveries.” But the New York-based critics sure weren’t sold. Here’s what they’re saying:

  • Filmmakers had just 2 days to shoot their 6-minute segments. “There were, however, no mandates to create interesting characters or avoid self indulgence,” laments Rafer Guzmán of Newsday. “In nearly every instance, fine actors spout drivel.”

  • “What’s remarkable here is the consistency of the mediocrity, the uniform fraudulence of the minipremises,” writes Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal. “Everyone’s insufferable, because everyone is afflicted with mock poetry.”
  • The stories come off like “classroom assignments in an undergraduate fiction-writing class,” says AO Scott of the New York Times. The out-of-town directors create a too-sweet, too-precious “fantasy city” where “no one would want to live, much less visit.”
(More movie review stories.)

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