Susan Granger’s review of “SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK” (Paramount Classics)
Writer/director/actor Edward Burns is unabashedly in love with New York City – and his films (“The Brothers McMullen,” “She’s the One,” “No Looking Back”) radiate this affection. This good-humored romantic comedy revolves around three men and three women whose romantic lives are entangled. Burns plays a TV producer/frustrated playwright from Queens whose girlfriend has thrown him out of their apartment. Bunking temporarily with his sleazy buddy/boss (Dennis Farina), he meets a sweet if snobby Upper East Side realtor (Heather Graham) who is unhappily married to a dentist (Stanley Tucci) who is having an affair with a 19 year-old waitress (Brittany Murphy). Meanwhile, Burns has started dating a 6th grade teacher (Rosario Dawson) whose nerdy ex-husband (David Krumholtz) wants a reconciliation – until he falls for the same teenage waitress. Burns weaves a complicated web of mistrust, deceit and infidelity, punctuated by mock interviews in which the participants face the camera and discuss the trials and tribulations inherent in this rondelet of sex, love and commitment. Borrowing the narrative structure, editing jump-cuts and hand-held camera techniques of “Husbands and Wives” from Woody Allen, a fellow Big Apple aficionado, Edward Burns has his clueless characters chatter aimlessly and incessantly. And several of them aren’t particularly likable, particularly Stanley Tucci’s weasely, narcissistic, sex-obsessed philanderer. Frank Prinzi’s cinematography is often too shaky and distracting, as if to attract attention to itself. So on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Sidewalks of New York” is a flippant 5, crammed with in-your-face New York attitude.
