Review of New York, I Love You (2008) by Laura D — 09 Sep 2011

It's an interesting idea - giving 10 or so different directors a couple of weeks each to shoot and edit a 10-minute short film about finding love in NYC before putting them together into one package. It allows for various styles and tones to coexist and helps to avoid a lot of the tired cliches that these ensemble romance flicks tend to live by. The trouble is that by it's very nature it's choppy and disjointed, which is never a particularly good thing, and as a whole it's very bleak and joyless - the various directors may have different styles but they certainly seem to be united in their desire to avoid the happy-go-lucky nature of your typical Love Actually or He's Just Not That Into You. Is this a blessing or a curse? I guess that depends on you. Personally I would have liked the artsiness/fun scale to be balanced a little more in favour of the latter. But hey, that's me.

You can't really fault the all-star cast but the real star - as the title suggests - is the location. It's really quite incredible that despite making it's 665,890th film appearance, the Big Apple is still as fresh and alluring as ever.