Review of Lymelife (2008) by Jason R — 18 May 2009

If my other recent reviews have been too critical, consider this one generous. After all, Martini's film is entirely lacking in originality. It starts with nods to Wes Anderson, but eventually settles into an unspecific rehashing, at large, of the coming-of-age in American suburbia genre.

Elizabeth thought it felt too much like "American Beauty," for example. But I think there's an obvious rationale for repeating such narratives: anyone who lives past their 18th birthday has one of these stories to tell.

Perhaps we'd be better off if more people just kept these tales to themselves, but whatever. What Martini lacks in cleverness or novelty is compensated for with smart performances, especially Timothy Hutton's.

He's got a really nice bitter cuckold scene with Baldwin, wherein he carefully balances his humiliation and general powerlessness with the one thing he has over Baldwin's banal philanderer. Casting two of the seemingly endless Culkin brood as brothers also works well; watching the elder Culkin smirk as his little brother gets his first bout of hangover vomiting has an honest resonance.

There is, however, the matter of the film's gratuitously ambiguous conclusion. The film gains nothing from the suggestion that Hutton possibly murders Baldwin, and the whole thing just feels like a cheap rip-off of European art cinema.

Nonetheless, I was entertained throughout. And who could resist an Alec Baldwin performance at this point?