{"id":9975,"date":"2024-12-11T17:35:27","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T22:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9975"},"modified":"2024-12-11T17:35:27","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T22:35:27","slug":"a-rainy-day-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/11\/a-rainy-day-in-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rainy Day in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A Rainy Day in New York <\/strong>(2019)\u00a0\u00a0 MPI Media Group\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (mature suggestive content, some drug use, language, partial nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Woody Allen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Woody Allen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: NDA (No Date Announced)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, Liev Schreiber, Kelly Rohrbach, Annaleigh Ashford, Rebecca Hall, Cherry Jones, Will Rogers, Suki Waterhouse, Ben Warheit, Griffin Newman, Kathryn Leigh Scott.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $23.8M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0As of this writing, I can\u2019t say when or even if American audiences will get to see A Rainy Day in New York<\/strong>, the latest film written and directed by Woody Allen. It was originally slated for release last year, but Amazon Studios cancelled it due to his being named in the #MeToo movement. We all know why he\u2019s in the proverbial doghouse so there\u2019s no need to rehash it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Over the past few months, A Rainy Day in New York<\/strong> has opened in other parts of the world- e.g. Poland, Greece, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, etc- but no American distributor will touch it. I got a chance to view it this past week and rest assured, you\u2019re not missing a thing. While not as bad as his previous film, the execrable Wonder Wheel, it\u2019s a far cry from the glory days of Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. If nothing else, it\u2019s proof positive that Woody Allen is no longer relevant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This time, Woody\u2019s stand-in is played by Timothee Chalamet, the young star of Lady Bird, Call Me by Your Name and Greta Gerwig\u2019s upcoming Little Women remake. The son of wealthy parents in New York City (where else?), Gatsby Welles attends upstate Yardley College where he coasts through his classes and makes extra money playing high-stakes poker. He sticks with school only because of his girlfriend Ashleigh (Fanning, Maleficent), a na\u00efve aspiring journalist from Arizona. When she gets the chance to interview famous filmmaker Roland Pollard (Schreiber, Spotlight) in Manhattan, Gatsby decides to go with her so they can have a romantic weekend together in the city. Naturally, things don\u2019t go exactly as planned.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Once Gatsby and Ashleigh go their separate ways, nothing goes right. Ashleigh\u2019s interview with Pollard turns into a madcap adventure of sorts after he agitatedly leaves a private screening. She joins his assistant Ted (Law, Captain Marvel) in searching the city, hoping to find him before he does something crazy like recut his movie. Meanwhile, Gatsby runs into Shannon (Gomez, The Dead Don\u2019t Die), the annoying younger sister of a former girlfriend, on the set of a student film being directed by an old classmate. She\u2019s initially harsh which can only mean she\u2019ll soften up when they inevitably meet again later. And since it\u2019s New York, it\u2019ll probably involve sharing a taxi.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A Rainy Day in New York<\/strong> will be familiar terrain for what\u2019s left of Woody\u2019s fans. He rehashes many of the same motifs like obscure name-dropping- e.g. Ortega y Gasset, Renoir- and peppering the dialogue with $10 collegiate words- e.g. apoplectic, plutocrat. Nobody in real life talks like the characters in a Woody Allen film. The score, as usual, is comprised of old jazz standards. The cinematography by third-time collaborator Vittorio Storaro depicts NYC as the most romantic of American cities, one curiously devoid of hostile city dwellers and street people. The main character is experiencing crises of the romantic and existential kind. In Woody\u2019s universe, the two are never mutually exclusive. It even has a slightly ditzy Mia Farrow stand-in in Fanning who doesn\u2019t quite pull it off. She doesn\u2019t NOT pull it off either. It\u2019s an odd performance if I\u2019m being honest.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The biggest problem is that A Rainy Day in New York<\/strong> simply isn\u2019t funny. I get that Woody is going for a 30s-style screwball comedy with all the nutty situations Ashleigh finds herself in. At one point, the paparazzi films her with a handsome movie star (Luna, Rogue One), mistakenly assuming she\u2019s his new girlfriend. Of course, it ends up on the 6 o\u2019clock news and naturally, Gatsby is watching. This bit falls flat as does all the other attempts at humor. When the focus shifts to Gatsby, A Rainy Day in New York<\/strong> becomes a variation of The Catcher in the Rye with the young man walking the streets and sitting hunched over tables and pianos at hotel bars. This doesn\u2019t really work either even though Chalamet delivers a decent performance. The uneasy mix of the zany and the existential results in a markedly uneven movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Woody always manages to put together interesting casts for his movies. Unfortunately, he always has at least one or two annoying characters. In A Rainy Day in New York<\/strong>, the dishonor goes to Gomez for her brittle socialite, one who knows everything about his relationship with her sister. There\u2019s nothing wrong with her performance or, for that matter, anybody else\u2019s. There\u2019s nothing remarkable here either. It\u2019s like everybody is on Woody Allen auto play.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In defense of the cast, many of them donated their entire salaries to organizations like RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), Time\u2019s Up and the LGBT Center due to the allegations against their director. Given the backlash against celebrities accused of sexual misconduct, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Woody decided to retire after finishing work on his next film Rifkin\u2019s Festival (due next year). I think it\u2019s a good idea. He used to make films people wanted to see; now he makes films nobody sees. He obviously doesn\u2019t have any more good ideas; he just recycles old ones. Does that make A Rainy Day in New York<\/strong> a green movie?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Rainy Day in New York (2019)\u00a0\u00a0 MPI Media Group\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (mature suggestive content, some drug use, language, partial nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Woody Allen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Woody Allen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: NDA (No Date Announced)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, Liev Schreiber, Kelly Rohrbach, Annaleigh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/A-Rainy-Day-in-New-York-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10335,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9975\/revisions\/10335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}