Film

You say you love us, collection of shorts, but honestly, we’ve heard that one before. We’re not falling for it. Perhaps such lines work on easier lays like L.A., but putting Natalie Portman in Hasidic garb doesn’t equal a fun date to us. Maybe we wouldn’t smirk so much if handsome single guys like Bradley Cooper didn’t just “accidentally” jump in the taxi backseat with us. (Like that really happens.) And wasn’t your extended bickering with the cabbie a bit much? This isn’t Friends. Maybe you enjoy these cavernous restaurants and lofty apartments, but we distinctly recall more grime, more waiting in lines. And Orlando Bloom is hardly a persuasive human being, much less a grubby, amorous composer. We’re not coming home with you, not with that skittish jazz music playing and your syrupy Ethan Hawke come-ons.

Cutesy and generic, New York, I Love You is almost colossally inept at capturing five-boroughs flavor—and we haven’t even gotten to the Brett Ratner–helmed bit about prom-night sex in Central Park. (Limiting Blake Lively to a single shot must be a cruel joke.) And then—what’s this?—an almost vaporous Drea de Matteo flits through the proceedings, haranguing herself in a post-one-night-stand narration on the subway and smiling that crooked grin; you wish Adriana could stay a while longer. A notorious Scarlett Johansson–directed segment has been shorn from the final cut, but having seen it (pretty awkward), we must say that her Coney Island hot dog moment has more authenticity than what remained.