Autumn in New York Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)August 16th, 2000
AUTUMN IN NEW YORK
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
MGM
Director: Joan Chen
Writer: Allison Burnett
Cast: Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, Anthony LaPaglia, Elaine Stritch, Vera Farmiga
"Awful in New York" should be the title of this tearjerker, a throwback to conventional soap-opera romance which would be fortunate to find an enthusiastic audience on afternoon TV. The only justification for putting this tripe on the big screen is the wonderful views of New York, particularly of Central Park and Rockefeller Center. But then, how could a one possibly find anything but beauty in the glamour spots of the world's most exciting city?
Aside from encouraging the old charge that May-December romances are just fine--provided that the man is December and the woman is May--the film sets back the women's movement even more than "Coyote Ugly," since no one in that audience who is sober could take the latter picture seriously. "Autumn in New York" director Joan Chen, however, is not at all ironic when she trots out the 51-year- old Richard Gere as a superstud able to evoke gasps of titillation from the scores of twenty-something women who cross his path.
Taking three years off the handsome actor, Chen introduces Will Keane (Richard Gere) as the owner of a mega-successful Manhattan restaurant, the latest icon on the cover of the trendy New York magazine, whose response to the indictment that his place is overpriced is, "Where else can you get a beet salad for thirty-five dollars?" (Sadly, this otherwise tongue-in-cheek comment is not altogether untrue, as a recent issue of New York magazine deals with a dinner indulged in by Gael Greene for some $840.) When womanizer and chronic liar Keane is introduced by the feisty mother of one of his ex girl friends, Dolly (Elaine Stritch) to the 22-year-old hat-maker Charlotte (Winona Ryder), it's infatuation at first sight. You'd hardly know this, though, as with so many romantic couples ambled out by Hollywood, the chemistry is minimal. Keane is shocked upon learning that his new love interest has less than a year to live considering that Joan Chen, exploiting Allison Burnett's screenplay, refuses to portray Charlotte as anything less than the charming and sprightly picture of health almost throughout the story. As Stephen Holden (who should have been appointed chief film critic at the NY Times) states, "Today we know too much about the body to accept the notion...that dying makes you more beautiful by giving you a heavenly glow."
The lavish views of the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center and the curt demeanor of Elaine Stritch in her too- small-role make the film watchable. The picture also gets us to wonder about the exorbitant prices of New York's classic eateries, charges that enable Will to fly the country's best heart surgeon by chopper from Cleveland to New York to perform a rare and virtually hopeless surgery on the dying Charlotte.
Rated PG-13. Running Time: 110 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten
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