New York Minute Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)May 7th, 2004
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It should only take you a New York minute to realize the Olsen Twins' New York Minute is a better movie than the bloated, over-hyped Van Helsing. Neither are actually good, mind you. But Minute, unlike Van Helsing, never (unless you've heard the studio compare the film to Ferris Bueller's Day Off) pretends to be something it isn't, like "cool" or "edgy" or "remotely original." It's a frigging Olsen Twins flick - it comes with an inherent disclaimer that nobody but 11-year-old girls are going to dig it. And on top of that, Minute has the common courtesy to be 45 minutes shorter than the B-movie from hell.
What I know about the twins couldn't gag a maggot. I don't know which one is which. I don't know which one played which character in Minute (they could have switched off, for all I know). I never watched Full House, any of their direct-to-video features, or It Takes Two. And I couldn't care less that this knowledge has somehow managed to elude me over the last 17 years. I don't think the twins are particularly hot, nor do I find them particularly unattractive. I think most people, whether or not they'd care to admit it, subliminally remember the time when the twins looked like ugly little monkey babies. Which means we know how to categorize the folks who think they're ugly adults (normal) and the ones who want to bed them (bestiality freaks).
In Minute, the twins play - wait for it - TWINS who couldn't be more different. Jane is cut from the Felix Unger/Tracey Flick mold: An uptight Republican with a day-planner and an important interview that could grant her an Oxford scholarship. Roxy is more of the Oscar Madison/Lane Kim-type: A wannabe drummer with messy hair, a Metallica t-shirt and an agenda to crash a music video shoot so she can slip demo CDs of her band to record executives. Jane and Roxy leave their Long Island digs, hop on the train and head for their different destinations in Manhattan. But, of course, things don't go as planned, and the twins end up forging a stronger relationship with each other (and the world!) before the closing credits start to roll.
It's not the most original idea to come down the pike this year, but, hey, at least it didn't cost $150 million to produce (and doesn't have a videogame tie-in or an animated DVD prequel on store shelves next week). I won't get too far into the crux of the antagonists in Minute because it would probably make your head spin off its axis. This two-headed monster is a Chinese black market computer chip producer (played by Andy Richter, naturally) and an obsessive truant officer (Eugene Levy) so hell-bent on catching Roxy cutting class, he has no trouble hanging up pictures of her in his dark, creepy apartment, or watching her through binoculars as he licks his lips with the anticipation of "catching" and "punishing" her (presumably, the panty-sniffing scenes were cut to get the PG rating).
Minute is also packed with racial stereotypes that should have pre-teen audiences in ignorant stitches. Maybe they'll be too young to roll their eyes at tired sequences, like when the hero dives off of a stage and crowd surfs to safety while their pursuer attempts the same thing but lands face-first in mud. Or when a tiny dog is lunging at someone's face and flies out the window as they duck out of harm's way. Or when the sisters continually run into the same four people no matter where they go on an island full of millions. They're probably also too young to fully appreciate the scene where Jane and Roxy shock each other by knowing, respectively, Mandarin and Ju-jitsu. Wonder Twin powers, activate!
While I will say nothing nice about the cretins who made this film, I will venture out on a limb and say the Olsens aren't awful, rating somewhere between Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore on the Periodical Table of the Tween Star. I'm downright baffled by the people who appear in Minute (a/k/a people who should know better), like Levy, Richter, Darrell Hammond and Andrea Martin, but the Bob Saget cameo was pretty funny. What would have been funnier is a quick pan over a Manhattan street vendor's wares, showing illegally bootlegged movies, including the one you're watching when you see it.
1:30 - PG for mild sensuality and thematic elements
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