2 Days in New York

source: 2 Days in New York

Okay... So I've seen Julie Delpy's Before Sunset, Before Sunrise and 2 days in Paris and enjoyed them. Sure, the films are very "chatty" but all in all pretty entertaining. Thus, I decided to watch 2 Days in New York. The film is just under one and a half hour and for approximately one hour and twenty-five minutes I was tormented by these maniac (and not the charming kind of maniac) french characters that were supposed to be her father, sister and the sister's boyfriend - who happens to also be Marion's (Julie's character) ex. It's pure horror. Really. At several occasions I very seriously considered just turning the film off, but I have this idea that every film I start watching deserve the chance to get better. Well... this one did. The last five minutes were actually pretty okay. That's it. Five decent minutes out of ninety. Not really a good result, is it?

Julie Delpy really has a good ear for shrewdly observational, overlapping conversations. It started with her Richard Linklater- directed bookends, 1995's "Before Sunrise" and 2004's "Before Sunset", in which she and Ethan Hawke contributed much of their own dialogue (and earned adapted screenplay Oscar nominations for the latter). She then translated her unique gift to her own sophomore directorial effort, 2007's "2 Days in Paris", a romantic dramedy that mined her character's repressed hesitancies about settling down with a neurotic, irritating interior decorator named Jack. Delpy comes back again as the star, director, and writer (this time partnering with co-star Alexia Landeau, who plays her sister Rose) of this 2012 sequel, a culture clash comedy paced like a free-for-all French farce. Although the results are not always fortuitous, her aptitude as a filmmaker has clearly improved since Paris, this time aided by a far more likable leading man, an atypically subdued Chris Rock versus the insufferable Adam Goldberg who is blessedly absent from this film. Delpy herself plays the same character, artist Marion Dupré, picking up her life in New York a few years after she broke up with Jack, had his baby, and moved in with Mingus, a talk- radio host. Instead of wallowing in commitment issues, Marion is now juggling a busy life raising her towheaded toddler Lulu as well as Mingus' young daughter Willow, and at the same time, getting ready for an exhibit of her photographs at a gallery. Nevertheless, she is still the same intensely self-doubting woman, a Gallic Annie Hall for the millennium with a saucy temperament. Her relationship with the ever-patient Mingus is put to the test when her recently widowed father Jeannot, her passive-aggressive sister Rose, and Rose's clueless, pot-smoking boyfriend Manu all come for a weekend visit. Delpy wisely uses Mingus as the audience's proxy watching her family as exaggerated caricatures of French stereotypes. This is where she shows a genuinely deft hand in presenting everyone's vitriolic, self-absorbed behavior including Marion who is constantly goaded into childishness by Rose's indirect insults. In fact, her family becomes a comical circus sideshow, a constant public embarrassment forcing Marion to tell a whopper of a lie about a phony brain tumor to her nasty neighbors who want her evicted. Where Delpy goes a bit too far is the somewhat surreal part when Marion decides to sell her soul as part of the exhibit and tries to get it back from the Mephistophelian buyer, who is none other than indie filmmaker Vincent Gallo. Using such an extreme plot conceit, she appears to be overreaching on deeper issues of identity and family loss, but the movie eventually recovers its comic rhythm. The puppet framing device is trite but probably effective for those who had not seen the previous film. As Mingus, Rock grounds the story with his terrifically caustic performance, whether dealing with the next appalling act of his unpredictable in-laws or talking privately to a cardboard cut-out of Obama for spiritual guidance. Albert Delpy, Julie's real-life father, returns as the Bad Santa-like Jeannot and has a grand time portraying his character's whimsical child-like manner. Landeau has a good time playing the selfish sister from hell as Rose, while Alexandre Nahon, who helped with the development of the story, easily plays the boorish interloper that is Manu. Kate Burton and especially Dylan Baker have a few moments to shine as the intrusive neighbors. Delpy's obvious role model continues to be early-period Woody Allen, and she manages to work in his oeuvre with surprising fluidity.

Even though this movie is cute and harmless to watch, I just can't call it a very successful one. I can see what it tried to do and be like and this all works in some parts but more often it just doesn't. I really have some mixed feelings about this movie. Can't say that i hated it and I quite enjoyed it in parts but its approach just doesn't always work out too well. It's a movie that tries to be a realistic drama about life, involving family but it inserts some crazy and highly unlikely situations and characters, that just don't blend in very well with the movie its story and the approach it was taking. It's an approach that could work out very well for a movie of this sort, as long as all of its situations remain somewhat realistic, which just too often isn't the case for this movie. It even makes the movie somewhat tiresome after a while. You start wondering were it all be heading at and what the overall point and purpose of the entire movie is. Luckily the movie doesn't ever get annoying, so it still remains a watchable enough little film. It certainly has some charm to it, which is the saving grace for this movie. Cute is a good way to describe this movie, that luckily doesn't ever become a bittersweet, cuddly one. It's deliberately small and simplistic with its story, characters and settings, which makes this an all the more warm movie to watch. I can certainly see some people still really enjoying this movie, especially females in their 30-40's, which this movie seems to aim towards. I definitely like Chris Rock better in this sort of roles, instead of flat out comedy type of roles. Sure, this movie is still being a comedy but a far more subtle one, that also definitely requires its actors to do a whole lot of acting. So really, even if you just can't stand Chris Rock, you are still able to really like him and his performance in this movie. He doesn't goes overboard with anything and it's being a really humble and human-like performance by him. It still seemed like an odd choice to me to do this movie mostly in French. It's a movie set in New York but yet Julie Delpy manages to still turn this into mostly a French movie. Nothing wrong with that of course but I just feel that this will scare off a lot of people from ever watching this movie. It's a fun and sweet enough little movie but also nothing more than just that really. 6/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

After watching 2 Days in New York i simply don't wan't to see the prequel. What amazed me, though, is that every single member of the cast did an excellent job. Even the script offers a fair amount of funny situation which leaves you with the question what went wrong. In my case this ended up with Chris Rock (otherwise not my cup of tea) creating the most lovable character of them all. The French family visiting is a bunch of logorrheic maniacs. It actually didn't matter where they came from, since their behaviour has nothing to do with geography rather with psychiatry. Smaller characters break up this verbal orgy once in a while...

See this movie, it was a pleasant surprise! I laughed throughout the entire movie, and while at some points in the movie I was frustrated with its progression, the overall experience was a good one. Chris Rock is funny, but the interaction with his co-stars along with comedic timing are what carried the movie. If you don't like subtitles, don't bother. With the subtitles, French and English dialogue AND the humor, getting sidetracked could be an issue, albeit not a big one. I don't mind subtitles at all, but I could see this distraction becoming a problem for some. Also, this movie is appropriately rated. If you are not into a little bit of raunchiness, then you might want to skip this film.

Julie Delpy may be among the most interesting and talented people connected with Hollywood. Born in Paris and educated in New York, the beautiful actress has also scripted and directed several films ranging from comedies to historical dramas, and even written the music for a few. She's cast her parents in numerous roles. If needed, she would probably delight her cast and crew by running craft services, too. This offering is a frenetic romantic farce, with Delpy and Chris Rock starring as a couple in Manhattan, coping with her son and his daughter from previous relationships. They manage quite nicely until her family comes from France for a visit. Dad (her actual father, Albert) is a delightfully eccentric old gent; her sister is a royal pain in the derrière. Even worse, she brings her endlessly annoying boyfriend, with whom Delpy had a brief fling years before. The clashes of three generations worth of cultures, personalities and languages are magnified by cramming so many bodies, and all their baggage, into a tiny Manhattan apartment. Chaos reigns. For about half of the film, the parade of anxieties, resentments and misunderstandings teeters precariously between making us laugh and feel exhausted from sensory overload. There's so much neurotic energy in the air that Rock is the one who seems least crazy! Delpy's creation adds up to a Woody Allen film fueled by crystal meth. But just before our mental fuses suffer from blown circuits, the plot mellows out with some highly satisfying, and not completely predictable, developments. Delpy rescues her cast and audience from their depicted excesses with wit and heart. This exercise in juggling the two cultural components of her own life is far more hyperbolic than her 2 Days in Paris, in which her American beau was the fish out of water visiting her family on its home turf. One wonders which Delpy found more cathartic? But that's a topic for someone else to explore - perhaps Woody's shrink is available.

I saw this film trusting the acting skills of Chris Rock... Although this film was a really disappointment... Boring,boring,boring and nothing to offer film is all i can say in a few words. A sex-addicted old man,a psychotic girlfriend, a sister walking around naked and a man that tries to tolerate them... Really bad script and even worst characters make a movie that it turns to be difficult to watch till the end.I made it cause i was curious to figure out if there was a point of all this.But the result was that i spend one and a half hour watching a big nothing

This is probably the worst movie I have seen in my entire life. Chris Rock is not funny at all in this movie. I can't even believe it's him and he agreed to play this role. It's nothing like his normal comedy. It's endless and crazy. All of the characters are horrible as well as the acting. I did not laugh out loud once. The girlfriend of Chris Rock is so super hard to listen to and watch. She is just so crazy and the acting is so bad. The only thing that is good about this movie is the name because it felt like it was 2 entire days long. If I hadn't paid for the movie I never would have finished watching it. We just kept hoping it would get better and it never did.

Oh my god. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen in 30 years. What is very rare with me, I wanted to leave the theatre quickly after the beginning of the movie. The last time it happened to me it was 30 years ago, I was about 14. But this time, for the first time in my life, I left the movie theatre one half hour before the end, because I couldn't stand it any longer. I saw that movie because one of my colleagues like "2 days in Paris", and this one was its sequel. Right from the beginning, I was dismayed by the vulgarity of the movie. The character played by the french actor July Delpy (who is also the director of the movie) is vulgar and insane, telling with crude words her whole sexual life to one of her colleague. But the worst came after : her french family came in New-York to visit her and her husband. Her father doesn't want to take a shower more than once a week, he was arrested at the airport because he had a lot of french sausages hidden under his clothes. Her sister and her sisters' partner are sex-addicts and drug users. The whole family is a bunch of asocial, immoral, ill-mannered and childish people. Well, one could say : it's just a farce. But the problem is that it's not shown like that. They seemed to be a typical french family, a kind of primitive tribe coming in a civilized world, the US. I didn't expect to see that kind of french-bashing coming from a french director. But True, Julie Delpy left France a long time ago and live in the US since many years now. Seeing that movie, I understand why : she seems to despise her former country and her former fellow citizens. I can imagine some US french-haters seeing that movie in the US, laughing loudly, and thinking : "I always knew that the french were like that, and it's a french who tells us, so it must be true !" I felt insulted, as if mrs Delpy had spit on my face. I'm not chauvinistic, but I don't like to be insulted, as anybody else I think.