2 Days in New York

My boyfriend and I were roaming the streets of Warsaw and got caught in a sudden downpour, so we ducked into a movie theater just in time to see this. I had actually been looking forward to it - I really liked 2 Days in Paris, and I rewatched Before Sunrise recently on my flight to Poland and found myself enjoying it much more than I'd expected to. So I was primed to enjoy Julie Delpy doing her thing. But 2 Days in New York fell a bit flat.

First off, the film seems insanely rushed. It clocks in around 90 minutes, but it seems like less, partly because it hustles through each scene with awkward jump cuts to remove "unnecessary" moments. A character gets up, and rather than add the one second of them walking to the door, you get this jolting cut to the door closing. Like, oh, ok, I guess we didn't really need to watch that, you're right, let's get to the point. Which is what, exactly?

Not much. The movie trots out the usual culture clash stereotypes. They're amusing - I laughed out loud at several moments - but there's not much that's new here. The plot is just nonsensical enough to be grating, with the curious result that I found myself nitpicking over minor details ("There's no way she would've had time to do that") and letting wildly unlikely things slide. Most problematic is that the "action," namely, the vagaries of the relationship between Chris Rock and Julie Delpy, are largely unconvincing. They're just not believable to me as a couple. There's zero chemistry, and their personalities don't seem to mesh at all. Both of them are kind of difficult and annoying in ways that would likely be an utter disaster in real life. All of their fights seem like somewhat minor kerfuffles, yet the movie occasionally seems to want us to take them seriously as Real Issues.

Overall, it doesn't quite add up. It's entertaining enough to rent, I think, but it's definitely not a must-see.