National Post (National Edition)
Theme music
The second-biggest question when watching The Only Living Boy in New York is how you’re going to get that Simon and Garfunkel tune out of your head afterwards. The biggest question is when said song will arrive on the soundtrack. It’s a full hour into the movie before we hear it; this after we’ve already had a cover of Blues Run the Game by the New York folk duo.
The title song, which begins “Tom, get your plane right on time ...” seems to refer to the main character, Thomas, a New Yorker played by Britain’s Callum Turner. Thomas is in love with Mimi, played by Kiersey Clemons, who has seven upcoming credits including a couple of DC superhero movies, so you’ll be seeing a lot more of her soon.
But Mimi already has a boyfriend, and so Thomas is mooning around Manhattan, trying to figure out how to get Mimi to wear his heart on her sleeve. And because screenplays hate a vacuum, into his life steps new neighbour W.F. Gerald (Jeff Bridges), a man so wise and well spoken I was certain he’d turn out to be a ghost or a figment of Thomas’s imagination. After all, the guy has no furniture and lives in the Shakespeare suite of Thomas’s building; Apartment 2B.
But he’s a real if slightly mysterious character in this drama. As are Thomas’s parents, publisher Ethan Webb (Pierce Brosnan) and his neurotic wife, Judith (Cynthia Nixon). And then there’s Johanna (Kate Beckinsale), who is sleeping with Thomas’s father, and who comes with her own ’60s theme song, Visions of Johanna, courtesy of Bob Dylan.
So there’s a lot of great music to recommend The Only Living Boy in New York. But the screenplay by Allan Loeb (he also penned the critical dud Collateral Beauty) is so New York-centric even Woody Allen might find it a touch insular. Thomas’s parents, for instance, complain that he lives too far away — he’s lower East side, they’re upper West. This is also one of those out-of-time movies in which people hang out in bookshops and quote Ezra Pound — not T.S. Eliot, mind you; that would be too easy.
It’s still an engaging story, as Thomas learns of his father’s mistress and then falls for her, setting up a semi-Oedipal conundrum slash love triangle, since he’s also still interested in Mimi. And director Marc Webb, who gave us the transcendent (500) Days of Summer as well as two Amazing SpiderMan movies, keeps the plot moving forward at a decent clip.
But you may find that the characters and their problems fade rather quickly from your mind. That theme music not so much. Now, if someone could just turn The 59th Street Bridge Song into a movie.
The Only Living Boy in New York opens in Toronto and Vancouver on Aug. 25, with other cities to follow.