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“Something’s missing and we all feel it,” Jeff Bridges narrates over some twee line-drawing animation illustrating that New York ain’t what it used to be back in the day when they were making “ Taxi Driver ” here. Okay, he doesn’t mention “Taxi Driver”—that would tend to muddy his character’s point—but he does mention Lou Reed quoting Yeats from the stage of The Bottom Line and laments the death of that legendary rock club. “It’s probably a SoulCycle now,” he says, making a play on the idea of lack-of-soul. (As it happens, it is not a SoulCycle; the building, which long belonged to New York University, is now being used for classes.)

The narration is by way of introducing this movie’s characters, in particular its main character, Thomas Webb, a young man who was born too late to have caught any of Lou’s Bottom Line shows, poor lad. Lanky and bespectacled, once the movie switches to live-action, he stands before a framed Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover with Mimi, who’s not quite his girlfriend (they slept together, once, on a date he obsessively remembers, August 8, but she reminds him they were both hopped up on “molly” at the time), and discourses on the times he wishes he hadn’t missed. Mimi chats on, and she mentions to him that she may be headed to Croatia on a fellowship. This crushes him, he says, because, and I quote, “You’re the only thing in my life I’m settled on.”

There’s a rub here. This is obviously going to be a coming-of-age story, so the character is going to have some growing up to do. So, we’re not going to initially be all that into him right off the bat. Nevertheless, there’s something a little sickening about the glib confidence that Callum Turner , as Thomas, brings to the line reading. (That Mimi is played by a lovely woman of color, Kiersey Clemons , adds a certain something to the dynamic.) What I’m saying is, in a comedic bildungsroman like this one, it’s apt to have doubts about the hero early on, but you’re not supposed to want to throw him out of a high window. I did, and I never quite recovered from that feeling.

Thomas, not quite crushed returns to his Lower East Side walk up and finds on his steps one Jeff Bridges, playing a garrulous codger who introduces himself as W.F. Gerald and encourages Thomas to unload. Thomas does, and Bridges then provides the narration to wax cliché philosophical about Thomas’ family and their dinner-party friends: successful-wealthy publisher dad Ethan, played by Pierce Brosnan , and depressive-loving Mom Judith, played by Cynthia Nixon . Pals who wax nostalgic about old NYC and the golden days before the Internet ruined everything include Wallace Shawn , Debi Mazar , and Tate Donovan . “Now Bushwick is expensive,” one character exclaims. Very timely. Between this and the cynical observations Bridges adds, the scene really blows the lid off social activity.

Intrigue arrives with the revelation that Ethan has a mistress, a beautiful editor named Johanna, played by Kate Beckinsale . Thomas confides all this to W.F., who subsequently will not stop repeating the phrase “Visions of Johanna.” Thomas’ fury turns to something else, and soon he too is sleeping with Johanna.

Directed with splashy competence by Mark Webb , this is the kind of movie whose idea of a fake-out is to play Simon and Garfunkel’s version of “Blues Run the Game” before breaking out the actual title song. It’s the kind of movie in which, after sex, the sheets miraculously arrange themselves to cover up body parts the filmmakers are contractually enjoined from showing. The kind of movie that wants to be a short story by Cheever or Updike or Roth but can’t help but being what it inescapably is, an impotent cry of “Yes I Can Do Literary” from a screenwriter whose idea of literary has been permanently Hollywoodized.

The script, by Allen Loeb (who also gave the world last year’s “ Collateral Beauty ,” a kind of cinematic Extraordinary Event) positively splashes about in a sitz bath of male self-flattery. While one certainly doesn’t expect much in the way of verisimilitude with films such as these, some larger sense of self-awareness would be nice. For instance, near the end of the movie Thomas is compelled to confess to Mimi what he’s denied to her all along, that is, that he has indeed slept with, and been sleeping with, Johanna. My expectation was that Mimi, who’s a reasonably smart person, would reply reasonably with “Yeah, I know.” Instead, the film has her break down and practically cry, “No, I thought you were good.” This takes things well beyond wish-fulfillment and into the realm of metaphorical public self-pleasuring. The twist that W.F. turns out to be a Famous Author (the fictional composite Loeb dreamed up alludes to both Thomas Pynchon —W.F. is reclusive—AND Nick Tosches—W.F. has been to an actual opium den) is then supplanted by another twist that’s jaw dropping in many ways. None of them the intended ones. But it does the neat trick of letting every single character off the moral hook, because somebody thinks it has to. In that pernicious sense, it’s actually kind of clever. But not exactly admirable.

The movie is also noteworthy in that it’s the first one I’ve seen in which I did not enjoy Jeff Bridges. His performance isn’t bad as such. It’s just that the character he plays is so unnecessary. Obviously he doesn’t think so. The great actor (who, you may or may not know, was actually the favorite of producers Michael and Julia Phillips for the lead role in, you’ll never guess, “Taxi Driver”) is also an executive producer on this picture.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

Callum Turner as Thomas

Kate Beckinsale as Johanna

Pierce Brosnan as Ethan

Cynthia Nixon as Judith Webb

Kiersey Clemons as Mimi Pastori

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‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ Is Glazed in Rich White Male Privilege

A light variation on the theme from 'the graduate,' it ultimately flops.

The Only Living Boy In New York  is a movie about the mating habits of dinosaurs.

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Actually, it’s a film about the mating habits of super rich literary bohemians living the highlife in Manhattan, a species not yet extinct but so rare at this point in the 21st century that even their chief chronicler, Woody Allen , has been forced to make either period pieces or movies set in Europe. This is a film that gives a lot of lip service to a lost Manhattan. As Jeff Bridges declares in a gruff voiceover, “ SoulCycle is the only soul this city has left.” Okay, sure, but what do they care? These characters, flitting off to black tie affairs in yellow cabs like the ladies from  Sex in the City,  are hermetically sealed off from the city they complain about by their wealth, neuroses and general lack of curiosity beyond whatever gorgeous human is standing before them. Having the city push back against these bubble dwellers might have lent this this comic drama a spark of dynamic tension. As is, the film feels flat and curiously tone deaf. After all, this may be the absolute worst time in American history to make a sex fantasy for a privileged white bro child, which is all this light variation on the theme from  The Graduate  ultimately is.

That said,  The Only Living Boy in New York  is not without its charms. They come mostly via a terrifically winning lead performance from Callum Turner as the title character. (“Am I the only living boy in New York?” is an actual question he asks in the movie.) The British actor can, at moments, feel like a nascent movie star in the neoclassical sense, with shades of Richard Gere and James Dean. Indeed, he has almost enough charisma to keep the film afloat after we lose interest in the fate and foibles of these droll and well-to-do Manhattanites. And then there is Jeff Bridges, playing his magic alcky neighbor whose intense interest in the boy almost justifies the kid’s sky-high self-involvement. He is good, goofy fun delivering what feels less like a Bridges performance than it does one of those Coachella holograms. Only instead of Tupac, it’s Nick Nolte circa 2002. While there are other movies currently in the theaters that mine better and more meaningful cinema set in a similar zip code (I am thinking specifically of Gillian Robespierre and Jenny Slate’s marvelous  Landline) , Turner and Bridges together make this film of questionable concept at least one that you can happily let pass over you when it accepts its future landing spot between  Seinfeld  reruns on TBS.

The hook of the movie is right out of a 1980’s teen sex comedy, and might have been better served in that form. When Thomas (Turner), an adrift would-be writer, can’t convince his out of his league best friend Mimi to fall in love with him—she’s played with a self-assurance that relies on no man by  Dope ‘s Kiersey Clemons— he sets about stalking and then seducing his father’s mistress. Despite moving as far away from his parents as they could imagine— from the upper West Side to theEast Village—Thomas is still tethered to his folks. He awaits approval that is not forthcoming from his imperious editor father ( Pierce Brosnan ), while protecting his mentally ill mother ( potential gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon ) from the outside world, including from his old man’s indiscretions.

Enter Kate Beckinsale as a freelance book editor, Johanna. (Along with the Simon & Garfunkel track that inspired the film’s wan title, Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” is regularly referenced and finally played.) Johanna is every English major’s idea of cheesecake: a little messed up and feisty in a flirtatious way. But, unlike Mimi, she never has enough agency to push back on whatever role has been assigned to her by the men in the story. It is odd that the film manages to grant Beckinsale two attractive lovers but never manages to create so much as a glimmer of sensuousness or even much sex appeal. Along with being Thomas’s intensely nosey neighbor, Bridge’s novelist character provides voiceover that gives a glimpse into these people’s inner lives as well as an idea of what the screenwriter thinks New York writers are meant to sound like—essentially, a more world-weary Carrie Bradshaw.

It is unfortunate that the filmmakers— director Marc Webb (( 500) Days of Summer  and  The Amazing Spider-man ) and writer Allan Loeb ( Things We Lost in the Fire  and   Collateral Beauty )—have coated what could have been a fun and silly romp with a glaze of unexamined rich white male privilege. Not only does it remove the film from a national zeitgeist that has never been more conscious of the issue, but it undercuts much of the fun to be had in this otherwise handsomely presented comedy. (Personally, I will never tire of seeing Central Park in fall, no matter the context.) The game and attractive cast, especially breakout star Turner, simply deserve better than what Webb and Loeb have ended up delivering: a film with a self-regarding title that in the end describes perhaps the one person on earth capable of fully enjoying it.

• SEE ALSO : ‘Arcadian’ Is a Cut Above Most Nicolas Cage Thrillers

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‘the only living boy in new york’: film review.

Rising star Callum Turner plays a young Manhattanite who has an affair with his father's mistress in Marc Webb's 'The Only Living Boy in New York,' co-starring Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan and Kate Beckinsale.

By Jon Frosch

Senior Editor, Reviews

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It’s quite a feat for a movie to deploy Simon & Garfunkel’s “ The Only Living Boy in New York ” and somehow leave you cold. With its wistful melody, the cathartic swell and gentle retreat of its chorus, the song is like emotional crack. Ryan Murphy made stirring use of it in the final scene of his The Normal Heart for HBO. Years earlier, it helped the climactic, rain-soaked kiss between Zach Braff and Natalie Portman in Garden State transcend that film’s cloying cutesiness . (Even those Honda Accord ads may give you the feels.)

But Marc Webb ‘s The Only Living Boy in New York , which both features and is named after the 1970 classic, milks it to alarmingly little effect. That’s probably because nothing in the movie merits or matches the song’s deep sincerity or nostalgic grandeur. Not even close. Not even a little.

Release date: Aug 11, 2017

Penned by Allan Loeb ( The Space Between Us , Collateral Beauty ), this slick pastiche of male-coming-of-age-story cliches borrows from a slew of similarly themed works, including The Graduate , Wonder Boys , Tadpole ,  Igby Goes Down , The Door in the Floor , The Squid and the Whale and The Wackness . That list of films — all of which are more interesting and satisfyingly realized than this one — suggests why The Only Living Boy in New York is so ineffectual: It’s hard to make the old feel new again, and even harder when the writer and director barely seem to be trying.

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All the major characters in The Only Living Boy in New York feel fatally familiar — including the angsty 20ish protagonist ( Callum Turner), his whisky-slurping, wisdom-spouting mentor ( Jeff Bridges ) and a damaged femme fatale ( Kate Beckinsale ) — as do the tone, setting, plot, dialogue , voiceover and perky score. That’s not to accuse the film, or its makers, of ineptitude. Webb directed 500 Days of Summer , a Joseph Gordon-Levitt/ Zooey Deschanel rom-com that was aggressively quirky but toyed with the genre’s conventions in fresh and charming ways. Even his less gratifying efforts — a passable, if underwhelming , pair of Spider-Man films and last year’s by-the-book weepie Gifted — were crafted with polish and professionalism. But while The Only Living Boy in New York looks nice (it was shot on film by veteran DP Stuart Dryburgh ), it’s an unabashed fake — glib and movie-ish in a grating way, with lots of prefab “soulfulness” and none of the texture or rough edges of life (or the winking self-awareness of this summer’s other, much more fun pastiche with a title lifted from Simon & Garfunkel : Baby Driver ).

Turner, a gifted British up-and-comer who was terrific in Adam Leon’s recent charmer Tramps (which, alas, went straight to Netflix with no theatrical release), plays a considerably less appealing young New Yorker here. Rich kid Thomas is just out of college and spends his days tooling around the Lower East Side with Mimi ( Kiersey Clemons ), an artsy beauty whom he pines for unrequitedly . He also hangs out a lot with neighbor W.F. (Bridges), an alcoholic author who’s always around to offer a crinkly smile or a piece of platitudinous advice. Playing a cliched , Screenwriting 101 idea of a writer rather than a recognizably real individual, Bridges is saddled with the cringiest dialogue — though he’s such an effortless performer that he succeeds in hitting one of the film’s few notes of authentic emotion.

Another comes courtesy of Cynthia Nixon as Thomas’ mom, Judith, a former artist whose life now mostly consists of popping pills and beaming beside her big-shot publisher husband, Ethan (Pierce Brosnan , coasting), at parties. Ethan is having an affair with sexy freelance editor Johanna (Beckinsale), something Thomas discovers when he spots the two nuzzling at a club one night. Thomas soon takes to stalking Johanna around the city, and before long, they’re sleeping together, too. Cue confrontations, life lessons and changes of heart, as well as an eye roller of a plot twist.

Smoothly made and clocking in at a compact 88 minutes, The Only Living Boy in New York is fairly innocuous as far as misfires go. But it’s thin — none of the characters are developed much beyond the pitch stage — and conspicuously lazy, right down to the song selections. The filmmakers have doubled up on Simon & Garfunkel, using their gorgeous “Blues Run the Game” near the beginning of the film. But as with the title tune, there’s no real rhyme or reason to the choice; it’s just an easy grab for the viewer’s heartstrings. In The Graduate , Mike Nichols used the duo’s work almost contrapuntally, to warm up a chilly story and give it layers of feeling the unhappy, boxed-in characters were mostly unable to express.

There’s no such sophistication here, as confirmed when Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” comes on the soundtrack after, ahem, Johanna starts seeing Thomas on the sly. That’s The Only Living Boy in New York in a nutshell: high-quality parts recycled into a derivative whole that lands squarely on the nose.

Production companies: Big Indie Pictures, Amazon Studios, Bona Fide Productions Distributor: Roadside Attractions Cast:  Callum  Turner, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce  Brosnan , Cynthia Nixon,  Kiersey   Clemons , Jeff Bridges Director: Marc Webb Screenwriter: Allan Loeb Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa Executive producers: Jeff Bridges, John Fogel , Mari-Jo Winkler Director of photography: Stuart Dryburgh Production designer: David Gropman Costume designer: Michelle Matland Editor: Tim  Streeto Music: Rob Simonsen Casting directors: Justine  Arteta , Kim Davis-Wagner

Rated R, 88 minutes

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Film Review: ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’

Marc Webb's new movie is a likable 'Graduate Lite' about an acerbic rebel preppie having an affair with his father's mistress.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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“ The Only Living Boy in New York ” is the new movie from director Marc Webb, who made “The Amazing Spider-Man” and its sequel (as well as the cookie-cutter child-genius drama “Gifted”), and it’s the first film he’s directed since “(500) Days of Summer” — yes, eight years ago — in which you can really feel the prickly pulse of his sensibility. It’s like “The Graduate” recast as a glibly literate slacker comedy with an entangled kink or two.

The hero, Thomas Webb (Callum Turner), is a gently acerbic rebel preppie who is spending his life figuring out what he wants to do with his life. He’s a would-be fiction writer coping with a world in which highly personalized art is disappearing — at least, as a monetizable career. And it’s not like that’s the only thing on the wane. The general erosion of middle-class security actually influences the way you watch a movie like this one, since you can’t help but be aware of how much Thomas’s alienation is intertwined with privilege.

His father, Ethan (Pierce Brosnan), runs a publishing imprint he built from the ground up, and he keeps asking Thomas why he’s wasting his time living on the downscale Lower East Side. But the way it looks to us, Thomas gets to live on the Lower East Side (and, when he feels like it, to slum with his parents in their Upper West Side brownstone). He gets to attend tony literary parties and dither his way toward a profession. And when he’s out with Mimi (Kiersey Clemons), a tart-tongued beauty who’s already slipped into the let’s-just-be-friends zone, and he spies his father kissing a woman other than his wife, he gets  to trail the mysterious mistress ( Kate Beckinsale ) like a stalker-detective, and then he gets to sleep with her. It all sounds a bit sordid (sharing a paramour with your dad!), but for Thomas it’s a way of acting out the resentment he feels toward the icy remote father who never respected his literary ambitions.

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It’s also a way of growing up. The catalyst for Thomas’s adventures is W.F. Gerald, a mysterious all-knowing alcoholic author, played with gruffly jaded glee by Jeff Bridges , who befriends Thomas on the stairwell of their apartment building and invites him up for a drink. Gerald’s apartment is empty except for a table and chairs and a liquor bottle; that seems to be all he needs, but he also claims to be wealthy. He coaxes the kid to reveal himself, and since Gerald comes on like a coach, therapist, anything-goes libertine philosopher chum, and surrogate dad all rolled into one, it doesn’t take long before Thomas is doing just that.

You might say that Gerald, with his enigmatic interest in Thomas, isn’t all that he seems to be, though it isn’t entirely clear what he seems to be. Yet Bridges, with a growl of whisky and cigarettes and a world-weary pensée for every occasion, makes him compelling company. The other actors are good too — Brosnan as the arrogant cosmopolitan father, Cynthia Nixon as his vulnerable in-the-dark wife, and Beckinsale, combative and alluring in what, in Allan Loeb’s script, is still a bit of an underwritten character.

It’s Callum Turner who makes his mark. Taking on a role originally slated to be played by Miles Teller, this 27-year-old British model and actor has a fascinating look — tall and handsome in a neurasthenic, milky-pale way — and he’s pensive but quick, with a gift for playing awkward situations that don’t leave the audience feeling awkward. The predicament in which Thomas finds himself is a kind of “Graduate Lite,” with Beckinsale’s Johanna as a less suburban, more girlishly inviting Mrs. Robinson who drags Thomas into the real world. But what he needs to discover isn’t really about sex. It’s about where he came from.

As a filmmaker, Marc Webb knows how to inflect well-crafted scenes with a personal touch — at least, when he isn’t getting swallowed up by franchise Hollywood. “The Only Living Boy in New York” isn’t, at this point, a great title for a movie, since the incandescent Simon & Garfunkel song it’s taken from was already used — defined — in the movies by the most memorable scene in Zach Braff’s “Garden State.” There’s all too likely a chance that a film like this one is going to be lost in the weekly deluge of indie releases. Yet if it’s less punchy and original than “(500) Days of Summer,” it’s still a wry tale that deserves to be seen. Gerald keeps telling Thomas that life should be a mess, but in “The Only Living Boy in New York” it’s a pleasingly witty and well-observed one.

Reviewed at Park Avenue Screening Room, New York, July 31, 2017. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 90 MIN.

• Production: An Amazon Studios, Roadside Attractions release of an Amazon Studios, Big Indie Pictures, Bona Fide Productions prod. Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa. Executive producers: Jeff Bridges, John Fogel, Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda.
• Crew: Director: Marc Webb. Screenplay: Allan Loeb. Camera (color, widescreen): Stuart Dryburgh. Editors: Tim Streeto. Music by: Rob Simonson.
• With: Callum Turner, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, Kiersey Clemons, Tate Donovan, Wallace Shawn, Anh Duong, Debi Mazar.

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The Only Living Boy in New York Review

The Only Living Boy in New York is filled with nostalgia for a Manhattan that's long gone, but the movie can't find its here and now.

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New York is not what it was. This is obvious every time one walks down the street and sees a Starbucks or McDonald’s where there was once a vinyl record store or a beautifully grimy dive bar with the best live rock this side of CBGB (which is also long gone). Thus Marc Webb’s The Only Living Boy in New York is understandably wistful for the decayed grandeur that has been replaced by corporate modernity—creative excitement supplanted for safe mundanity. Yet the New York in Webb’s film, right down to its evocative title being borrowed from an underrated Simon and Garfunkel tune, is a fantasy, one where New York remains a vintage wonderland for white males that’s been made charming by oh, so many Woody Allen movies. They even get Wallace Shawn in for a cameo.

But even with its Allen-esque aspirations, The Only Living Boy is hardly breathing at all. Less a vibrant ode to the past and more a misty-eyed ramble from a kid speaking about a Manhattan he’s never been in, the film’s warm vibes only come alive when the adults who fill the periphery take center stage, including Pierce Brosnan, Kate Beckinsale, and a delightfully garbled Jeff Bridges. When these folks are pulling the eponymous child Thomas (Callum Turner) into their gravity, that old New York which is supposed to still pulsate to the rhythms of Gershwin—or at least Peter, Paul, and Mary—lives again.

However, as Thomas laments to his old school author neighbor, Bridges’ stylishly disheveled W.F. Gerald, maybe this boy’s young life isn’t that interesting. W.F. convinces him otherwise, but we think Thomas got it right the first time.

The film itself has a seductively appealing premise. As the son of a successful but unhappy publisher named Ethan (Brosnan), Thomas is floating through life after dropping out of Columbia. Refusing to take his father’s offers of help, he has hidden away in his one-bedroom on the Lower East Side while supporting himself as a tutor—we said this was a fantasy, right?—and pining after the incredibly chic girl (Kiersey Clemons) at his local independent bookstore.

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When Thomas meets his published neighbor, who appears as if “the Dude” had received an erudite education and ended up in Hannah and Her Sisters , the young lad is merely looking for advice on how to woo his crush and deal with a dad who wants to push him into publishing when all the kid really desires is to write.

But his life will suddenly become a lot more complicated after Thomas and Clemons’ Mimi accidentally stumble on an old jazz nightclub where papa Ethan is on a date with Johanna (Beckinsale), decidedly not Thomas’ mother. That thankless role of saintly soul falls to Cynthia Nixon, whom is the only thing Thomas likes about his Upper West Side childhood. So he puts it on himself to stalk follow Johanna, day after day, in search of answers. She of course notices the 20-year-old walking right behind her and then gives him all the answers he wants in her bed.

There’s a deliciously amoral streak running through The Only Living Boy in New York ’s earnest stare. A story of a son being seduced by his father’s mistress has all the appeal of a comedy that Simon and Garfunkel might have scored themselves once upon a time. There’s even talk in this film by Mimi about how Thomas is becoming “one of them.” The them is the corrupted and complacent older generation. Yet the film’s own nostalgia for the past makes these proclamations of purity seem dishonest, and if we want to really speak truth, it’s the older folks that give the movie its crackle.

Like a writer reading the first chapter of his latest triumph, Bridges intones with maximum gravel the storybook-like machinations of Thomas’ life and the people in it. An entire film narrated this way could even be appealing, as are the scenes of Brosnan slowly realizing his unambitious Millennial son might be sticking his nose in places it doesn’t belong. Beckinsale meanwhile remains as beguiling as ever and seems to relish at the least being able to play a greater vampire than she has in any Underworld , casting a spell over our would-be romantic hero who never had a chance.

However, the film’s disinterest in understanding why Johanna would even find a curiosity in this whiny malcontent other than as a power move underscores the hollowness of it all. Johanna is less a character than an ideal, a great proxy for a New Yorker short story. But the movie has neither the nimbleness of a dirty limerick or the grace of a genuinely moving drama. Consequently, it’s like being in a novelty store filled with fuzzy memories for mysterious lives lived. After two hours, it’d have been nice to know something about the antiques that occupy it.

The irony is that there is a definite history unearthed about Ethan, W.F., and other characters as the film winds down to its conclusion. A movie about that drama sounds, at least from the outside, like it could have been a pleasantly crisp walk through Central Park. But as merely third act background, we’re left with the boy in the forefront who despite his allocutions about the past represents everything he despises in modern New York: a glossy emptiness. 

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2.5 out of 5

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

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The Only Living Boy in New York Reviews

Frequently feels like it is about to spin off its axis but Webb fights past the clunky dialogue and overly complicated story to present an engaging coming-of-age story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 28, 2021

One disingenuous cliché piled on top of another, right down to the Simon and Garfunkel song.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jan 20, 2021

That The Only Living Boy in New York is uninspired and programmatic is reason to skip it. But the fact that it's also a smug serving of "nice guy" wish fulfillment is reason to actively warn others away.

Full Review | Dec 11, 2020

The strength of the film is in the performances and the direction. Webb is making his version of a Woody Allen movie, without the complexities, and that's fine with this cast.

Full Review | May 12, 2020

It was so cheesy, but I guess sometimes you just find yourself in the mood for cheese.

Full Review | Jun 12, 2019

The Only Living Boy in New York is never able to achieve cohesion among its disparate story lines and suffers from its dedication to showing Thomas as a good guy despite all evidence to the contrary.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 8, 2018

The Only Living Boy in New York is insufferable in almost every way possible.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 19, 2018

...a movie that strains for The Graduate but only gets to keep the Paul Simon echoes.

Full Review | Jan 24, 2018

Good drama of family intrigue. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 27, 2017

Marc Webb's film trundles along... with awkward dinner parties, a wedding and assorted pining.

Full Review | Dec 18, 2017

The Only Living Boy in New York fails to play with its conventions, deciding to focus solely on the surface, ending with an unoriginal film taking itself much too seriously.

Full Review | Dec 4, 2017

Not even Jeff Bridges' drawl can salvage a line like, "soul cycle is the only soul the city has anymore."

Full Review | Nov 9, 2017

Without giving too much away, the contrived nature of the story makes it a challenge to fully connect with these characters.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Oct 23, 2017

... there was the possibility of dramatic reach beyond a soundtrack with a Bob Dylan song playing in the background. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 20, 2017

If you enjoy films that are more an observation on life, you'll love this one. It's simple and warm, and just a very pleasant way to spend a few hours experiencing life and the world through another's eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 19, 2017

The Only Living Boy is a most engaging film that confidently enters vintage Woody Allen territory with consummate success.

... Marc Webb seems to be hypnotized by that nostalgia of adolescence... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 18, 2017

The rich, as I suppose they informed us, also cry. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 16, 2017

... tackles a fascinating love triangle that faces two areas as contradictory as the bohemian and intellectual. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 13, 2017

There's an ambition here that is never realised, try as Webb did to infuse the film with that New York spirit. There's no real depth to the film, only imitation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 13, 2017

The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

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The only living boy in new york, common sense media reviewers.

Language, sex, drinking in tale of privilege, coming of age.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Difficult life situations provide writers with gre

Thomas has talent but has been discouraged from pu

Although his first instinct is to violently lash o

Friends recall a one-night stand they had at a tim

"F--k," "s--t."

Adults drink and smoke cigars, cigarettes, and mar

Parents need to know that The Only Living Boy in New York centers on a privileged 20-something young man (Callum Turner) stepping through to maturity -- although the way he does so involves some iffy judgment. He stalks and then sleeps with his father's mistress. But he also follows his own dreams …

Positive Messages

Difficult life situations provide writers with great material. "Should" is a dangerous word. "The only way out is through."

Positive Role Models

Thomas has talent but has been discouraged from pursuing writing by his publisher father, who had wanted to be a writer himself but wasn't talented enough. Resentful and distanced from his disapproving dad, Thomas has a secret affair with his father's mistress. Thomas' parents have a troubled marriage.

Violence & Scariness

Although his first instinct is to violently lash out after his son wrongs him, a man contains his fury out of love. A woman recalls that her father committed suicide when she was young.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Friends recall a one-night stand they had at a time when the girl was dating another man. Kissing. A young man has sex with his father's mistress; no nudity. They're shown lying together in bed afterward. A woman pretends to be a prominent man's date in order to help him hide his sexuality.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults drink and smoke cigars, cigarettes, and marijuana. Quaalude use is mentioned. A character is described as an alcoholic.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Only Living Boy in New York centers on a privileged 20-something young man ( Callum Turner ) stepping through to maturity -- although the way he does so involves some iffy judgment. He stalks and then sleeps with his father's mistress. But he also follows his own dreams (writing), despite the fact that his father disapproves. Sexual situations, infidelity, the meaning and responsibilities of parenthood, drinking, and smoking (both cigarettes and marijuana) all play roles as the titular boy struggles to move into manhood. Language is also strong; expect to hear both "f--k" and "s--t." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 1 parent review

A coming-of-age story about a young writer in New York City

What's the story.

THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK is Thomas ( Callum Turner ), a college dropout whose wealthy publisher father, Ethan ( Pierce Brosnan ), disapproves of him and whose fragile mother, Judith ( Cynthia Nixon ), adores him but mopes over some inner dissatisfaction. A scruffy stranger ( Jeff Bridges ) moves into Thomas' low-rent apartment building and immediately intrudes on Thomas' intimate life, offering romantic "advice" and hinting at a later-to-be-revealed connection between the two. Thomas, who's been relegated to "friend" status by the girl of his dreams, Mimi ( Kiersey Clemons ), even after their one-night stand, soon discovers that his father is having an affair with Johanna ( Kate Beckinsale ), a much younger colleague. Feeling protective of his emotionally delicate mother, Thomas confronts Johanna and promptly begins his own affair with her. Is it payback for his somewhat insensitive father? A cry for attention from the girl who's rejected him? Material for the book he really needs to get to work on? Or is it just his way of unraveling the threads woven around a big family secret?

Is It Any Good?

This drama is nicely written, but it's far from original. For one thing, the introduction of a mysterious character lamely foreshadows that character's importance. On the plus side, The Only Living Boy in New York deeply echoes the overall feel of Crossing Delancey , in which an aspiring young woman steeped in the literary world of New York bookstores and publishing also makes iffy choices in her complicated love life. And Mike Nichols' revered The Graduate reverberates in Thomas' aimlessness and his affair with an older woman. The Simon and Garfunkel theme song also nods at that earlier (and better) film. But unlike The Graduate , which at least suggested that its society's obsession with success and materialism was part of a larger social crisis, The Only Living Boy in New York dwells not on Thomas' advantages but on his petty concerns. There's no acknowledgment that the New York City allegedly lacking "soul" today probably does so mostly because it's only publishing house owners and successful novelists who can afford to live there. This obliviousness makes the story a little difficult to take seriously.

Obliviousness aside, the movie is a kind of love poem to a certain sector of privileged (or striving-to-be-privileged) New York artists of the sort who used to be mocked in old Woody Allen movies. Characters quote Ezra Pound and do their best to sound both pithy and world weary at dinner parties. Marc Webb , who directed The Amazing Spider-Man but who also does projects with more emotional heft, including the recent Gifted , grounds this film in a reality that it might otherwise be missing had it been based on the script alone. He gives non-problem problems a coat of gravity and coaxes Brosnan and Bridges out of their usual shtick (glib and sagely shambling, respectively). But the revelation here is Turner, an English actor whose American accent is flawless and whose ability to listen and to telegraph subtle emotions on camera makes him a pleasure to watch. The guy is lit from within.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the problems that surface in The Only Living Boy in New York . How do the complicated love lives of the wealthy, as depicted here, compare in importance to some of the dire urban issues affecting other people who live in New York City?

How might the movie's tone and context have been different if it was set in rural Texas? Is New York City an indispensable character here?

Why do you think Thomas decides to have an affair with his father's mistress? Is it revenge, or is there another reason?

How are drinking and drug use depicted? Is substance use glamorized ? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 11, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : April 17, 2018
• Cast : Callum Turner , Kate Beckinsale , Pierce Brosnan , Cynthia Nixon
• Director : Marc Webb
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Queer actors
• Studios : Amazon Studios , Roadside Attractions
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 88 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language and some drug material
• Last updated : October 7, 2022

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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The Graduate

Crossing Delancey

Manhattan (1979)

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'The Only Living Boy In New York': Review

By Tim Grierson, Senior US Critic 2017-08-05T02:00:00+01:00

Callum Turner leads an all-star feature about an aimless young man who strikes up an affair with his father’s mistress

Dir: Marc Webb. US. 2017. 88mins

Straining to exude a literary air of urbane sophistication, The Only Living Boy In New York becomes instead a rather undistinguished coming-of-age tale with a provocative premise it can’t quite execute. Director Marc Webb’s drama about an aimless young man who begins sleeping with his father’s mistress has its share of nice, small moments, not to mention a cast headed by Callum Turner and Kate Beckinsale that’s attuned to the story’s novella-like intimacy. And yet, the whole endeavour ends up feeling fussy and clever rather than incisive and nuanced — especially when a late twist seriously jeopardises plausibility. 

The film mistakes terse, showy dialogue for real insight into these struggling souls

Only Living Boy arrives in US theatres on August 11, catering to adult audiences familiar with Beckinsale and co-stars Pierce Brosnan, Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Nixon. The film’s elite New York environs, mixed with adultery and family dysfunction, could appeal, although muted reviews may not help.

Turner plays Thomas, a college graduate who doesn’t know what he wants out of life. Smitten with his platonic friend Mimi (Kiersey Clemons), who doesn’t share his romantic feelings, Thomas has always been distant from his successful, judgmental publisher father (Brosnan). His complicated feelings only become thornier when he discovers his dad has been sleeping with Johanna (Beckinsale), a freelance editor behind his beloved mother’s (Nixon) back.

Written by Allan Loeb, Only Living Boy establishes Thomas’ alienation from his privileged upbringing and then surprises us when his angry confrontation of Johanna results in a spark between them, leading to a clandestine sexual relationship. Webb ( Gifted ) intentionally rushes this seemingly mismatched pair into bed, letting their decision feel impetuous and mysterious — perhaps even to themselves.

Beckinsale skilfully navigates Johanna’s mercurial whims, portraying her as a sensitive, intelligent woman who’s a bit adrift and craving new experiences, such as romancing this naïve younger man. For his part, rising star Turner ( Queen & Country , Assassin’s Creed ) does a decent job of playing Thomas as restless and resentful, the simmering contempt he feels toward Johanna unexpectedly morphing into lust. Is he sleeping with her only because she’s alluring — or is it some twisted act of vengeance against his father for betraying his mother? Or, perhaps, does Thomas see an opportunity to compete with him in the world of men?

The multiple interpretations of characters’ actions give Only Living Boy a teasing ambiguity, but eventually it becomes clear that Webb and Loeb simply don’t have much new to say about commitment, growing up or the generational divide. More lamentable, they dress up their shop-worn revelations with literary pretensions, with key elements of the film narrated by W.F. Gerald (Bridges), Thomas’ cryptic, professorial new neighbour who also happens to be a reclusive author. Several of Only Living Boy ’s characters are involved in the profession — Thomas had dreamed of being an author, until his dad discouraged him — but the movie mistakes terse, showy dialogue for real insight into these struggling souls.

As Thomas’ wise, loopy sage, Bridges somewhat dials down the Zen dude-ism which seems to have been central to his onscreen persona since The Big Lebowski . Still, the Oscar-winner seems to be operating on his own plane, which becomes distracting. Nixon is enormously sympathetic as Thomas’ frail mother, who doesn’t know about her husband’s affair but, quite possibly, might become unhinged if she found out. Brosnan projects his usual bulletproof charm, which the actor wields like a weapon for a character who is secretly a heel. As for Clemons, she’s trapped playing Thomas’ enchanting unrequited love — once he falls for Johanna, though, Only Living Boy is at a loss for what to do with her.

As complications arise and Johanna must decide between her two lovers, Only Living Boy tries to deliver a narrative wallop, introducing an unexpected plot element which is meant to reframe everything we know about these characters. It’s the sort of device that might work better in a novel, where an author has hundreds of pages to flesh out his protagonists and milieu, but Only Living Boy proves too slight and too shallow to justify the audacious twist. Rather than enriching the viewer’s experience, the filmmakers cheapen it with a gimmick.      

Production companies: Amazon Studios, Bona Fide Productions, Big Indie Pictures

International sales: FilmNation, www.filmnation.com

Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa

Executive producers: Jeff Bridges, Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda, John Fogel

Screenplay: Allan Loeb

Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh

Production design: David Gropman

Editor: Tim Streeto    

Music: Rob Simonsen                       

Website: www.onlylivingboyinnewyorkmovie.com

Main Cast: Callum Turner, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, Kiersey Clemons, Jeff Bridges

• United States

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Review: The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

The only living boy in new york (2017).

Directed by: Marc Webb

Premise: A recent college graduate (Callum Turner) discovers that his father (Pierce Brosnan) is having an affair. He makes contact with his father’s mistress (Kate Beckinsale) and eventually begins his own affair with her while contemplating his next move.  

What Works: The Only Living Boy in New York is well cast and the actors do the best job they can with the material. The film is led by Callum Turner as Thomas, a recent college graduate who is unsure what he wants to do with his life. The character is full of young adult angst and Turner conveys the character’s uncertainty but without becoming obnoxious. Jeff Bridges is cast as a wise and mysterious neighbor who offers advice to Thomas; Bridges has played this kind of role before and he does it well. Kate Beckinsale is cast as the other woman and she makes the mistress more than a sex object. Beckinsale projects intelligence as well as sexuality and offers flashes of depth into the character. The best story element of The Only Living Boy in New York is the relationship between Thomas and Mimi, a college student played by Kiersey Clemons. The two of them are close but they aren’t officially involved and the two actors play the nebulousness of their relationship convincingly.

What Doesn’t: The Only Living Boy in New York pines after The Graduate , replicating many of that film’s plot points and even borrowing the name of a Simon & Garfunkel song for its title, but this is nowhere near Mike Nichols’ 1967 film. The Graduate was a master class in youthful angst and dark humor with an incisive look at social decadence and the gulf between our expectations and the realities of life. The filmmakers of The Only Living Boy in New York clearly want their film to be The Graduate for a 2017 audience and they put their lead character through similar paces, namely an affair with an older woman, but they miss exactly what made The Graduate a profound cinematic experience. And that is precisely the problem with this movie. The filmmakers of The Only Living Boy in New York carry on as though they have an Important Message and the movie stinks of pretension. The Only Living Boy in New York was written by Allan Loeb, whose previous screenwriting efforts include disasters such as Collateral Beauty and The Switch . Loeb is a writer who confuses whimsy with idiocy and the ideas of his stories have the depth of a freshman philosophy student who’s just discovered Friedrich Nietzsche. The characters speak in trite platitudinous dialogue that’s supposed to sound witty and insightful but actually means nothing. The story is a web of clichés. The Only Living Boy in New York is another movie about a starving artist living in New York City although he’s not really starving and he’s not much of an artist. His parents are well off and the movie never actually shows us the young man doing the work of a writer. The filmmakers also seem to think they are being radical or enlightened in the way that they critique the traditional family structure. Here too the filmmakers have nothing interesting to say. The film suggests that infidelity is actually a path to enlightenment and it conveniently skips over the betrayal and heartbreak involved. This film is especially disingenuous in its gender politics. The filmmakers think their picture is sex positive and progressively feminist but it isn’t. Rather than the overt sexism of a Michael Bay movie, this is the soft sexism of pseudo-progressive beta-males who see women as objects but are polite about it. The Only Living Boy in New York finally flies apart in its ending. The film concludes on a preposterous revelation that is supposed to tie everything together in a profound bow but instead it exposes the stupidity at the heart of the movie.

Bottom Line: The Only Living Boy in New York desperately wants to be The Graduate but it’s not even American Pie . This is a coming of age story in which the character learns nothing and all the ideas in this movie are shallow and insincere.

Episode: #663 (September 3, 2017)

• Amazon Studios

Summary Thomas Webb (Callum Turner), the son of a publisher and his artistic wife, has just graduated from college and is trying to find his place in the world. Moving from his parents’ Upper West Side apartment to the Lower East Side, he befriends his neighbor W.F. (Jeff Bridges), a shambling alcoholic writer who dispenses worldly wisdom alongs ... Read More

Directed By : Marc Webb

Written By : Allan Loeb

The Only Living Boy in New York

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Callum Turner

Thomas webb.

Kate Beckinsale

Pierce Brosnan

Cynthia Nixon

Judith webb.

Jeff Bridges

W.f. gerald.

Kiersey Clemons

Mimi pastori.

Tate Donovan

Wallace Shawn

Ben Hollandsworth

John Bolger

Irwin sanders.

Uncle Buster

Richard Bekins

Prominent new yorker, ryan speakman, oliver thornton, alexander sokovikov, taxi driver.

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‘colin from accounts’ harriet dyer & patrick brammall say the romantic comedy was inspired by a real-life mishap – contenders tv, ‘the only living boy in new york’ review: sexy fun for adults sick of summer blockbusters.

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This smart, sexy and sophisticated entertainment for grownups sick of typical summer Hollywood fare verges on melodrama in parts but delivers some sensational fun thanks to a uniformly superb cast. Although  The Only Living Boy in New York (a title taken from the Simon and Garfunkel song) has stars including Jeff Bridges , Pierce Brosnan , Kate Beckinsale and Cynthia Nixon, among others, it is anchored by the lesser-known British actor Callum Turner ( Assassin’s Creed).

He plays Thomas, a young man from an upscale background who discovers his publisher father Ethan (Brosnan) is cheating on his mother Judith (Nixon) with an attractive woman named Johanna (Beckinsale). Taking things perilously close to soap opera territory, Thomas’ initial stalking of his prey turns into his own clandestine affair with his father’s seductive but emotionally frustrated mistress, who is tired of empty promises that the man she has been secretly sleeping with for a year has not left his wife. Lurking in the background of all of this, detached from the action but observant nonetheless, is Thomas’ novelist neighbor W.F. Gerard (Bridges), who offers advice and counsel to him as events careen out of control. There’s also Thomas’ unsteady relationship with Mimi (Kiersey Clemons), who essentially is shunted aside as Thomas gets more confused and more involved with Dad’s side dish.

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Screenwriter Allan Loeb throws in a whopper of a third-act twist that might have risked credibility in lesser hands. But it is handled with just the right touch of irony and humanity by director Marc Webb, who has been rescued from the  Spider-Man universe to return to the kind of frothy, independent-minded grownup movies he previously made like the wonderful  500 Days Of Summer. This could be called a coming-of-age tale not just for Thomas but for the older characters as well, who all eventually have their own come-to-Jesus moment supplied by a script that slowly ratchets up the action, and the stakes.

The movie, produced by Albert Berger and Rox Yerxa ( Little Miss Sunshine),  had been in development for more than a decade and actually was Loeb’s first in a career that also includes the recent  Collateral Beauty  and  The Space Between Us,  as well as  Things We Lost in The Fire, 21  and  Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps  among other mainstream entertainments. He’s definitely got a commercial eye that might turn off some critics, but it works for me, at least in this case — as I say in my video review (click the link above to watch). Part of the reason I succumbed to it all is Beckinsale, who as Johanna brings a human complexity to a character who might have been seen only to be conniving and ruthlessly unfeeling. She’s just terrific here.

Brosnan, as always, is excellent, as is grizzled vet Bridges and the warm Nixon. Turner may be from across the pond, but you wouldn’t know it, and he manages to carry the film on his shoulders without losing the audience along the way, not an easy trick. I can think of other young actors who might have been more appealing, but Turner meets the challenge head-on. I had a good time with it all.

Roadside Attractions releases for Amazon in select theaters today before expanding as the summer drifts into the fall. This is the perfect transition.

Do you plan to see  The Only Living Boy in New York? Let us know what you think.

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Movie Reviews

'the only living boy in new york': a callow, shallow writer makes good.

Ella Taylor

Kiersey Clemons and Callum Turner in The Only Living Boy in New York. Niko Tavernise/Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions hide caption

Kiersey Clemons and Callum Turner in The Only Living Boy in New York.

Doffing a hasty prefatory cap to the crime stats and overflowing garbage of 1970s New York, Marc Webb's The Only Living Boy in New York soon withdraws to more glam pastures within. By which Webb and screenwriter Allan Loeb mean the amber-lit, opulent interiors where Manhattan's writers and artists gather to kvetch and preen. Not much writing or arting goes on here, but it is clear that these are creative types because they are extremely attractive and throw dinner parties where they gesture prettily with slender-stemmed wine glasses while drily quipping.

At one such soiree fronted by happening couple Ethan and Judith (Pierce Brosnan and Cynthia Nixon, silver and bronze), clever banter sails around the table like flying saucers. Judith laughs proudly at a particularly pithy sally produced by her son Tom, also an aspiring writer. Tom, the only living boy, etc., is having issues even though he is played by Callum Turner, who resembles Eddie Redmayne cross-bred with a young Richard Gere wearing the serious-minded spectacles that people of intellect are known to do, whether writers or not.

Tom's dad doesn't want him writing because — and he should know — there's no security in it. His mom is okay with it, however, and he's got an encouraging sort-of girlfriend (Kiersey Clemons) and a Lower East Side walkup that ought to be chintzy enough to get anyone's creative juices going. Alas, Tom is convinced he has no life and therefore no material. Until, that is, he meets a suspiciously attentive mystery gent who lives across the hall and who provides the movie's world-weary voiceover, just in case the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack doesn't do the job. And really, who wouldn't want to be Jeff Bridges' new BFF, even though his paint-peeled apartment lacks a stick of furniture and he is, for now , known only by his initials — W.F. — and he's drunk or disappeared much of the time?

Still, W.F. has an undeniable point when he observes, in the sexy Bridges mumble we all adore, that Tom's life fairly teems with serviceable psychodrama. For starters, he's hitting the sack with Someone He Shouldn't (Kate Beckinsale, in full siren gear) and creating a domestic mess even Mrs. Robinson might balk at. The callow youth steams ahead regardless, fully confident that he understands the ways of the world. Begging to differ, W.F. offers himself as the smoking gun of young Tom's future as well as his agent of change. Where all this is going, alas, becomes crystal clear well before half time due to much nodding and winking from plot, dialogue, and further injections of Simon and Garfunkel.

The Only Living Boy in New York began life years ago as the breakthrough first screenplay of Loeb, whose credits include a sequel to Oliver Stone's Wall Street and the critically trounced Will Smith movie, Collateral Beauty , about which the best that was said was that it meant well. The best I can say for The Only Living Boy is that it doesn't have a cynical bone in its body either. And if you liked Webb's enormously popular but, to this critic's mind, horribly pandering (500 Days) of Summer , you'll probably enjoy this too.

As a coming-of-age parable, though, Tom's rite of passage indulges to the full the adolescent fantasy that just about all the people in his young life have put their lives and longings on hold — for decades! — for his sake alone. At the close, with all cats safely out of bags and truth ascendant, these noble self-sacrifiers — let us call them Satellites of Tom — instantly take up their long-delayed destinies as if several decades had not run away with their dreams. Everyone's good!

Unlike most of us who grow up to realize that the world does not revolve around us, young Tom discovers that, give or take an early publisher's rejection, it does. Call him a lucky fellow if you like. For my money his troubles begin right here — which, come to think of it, would make a really interesting movie.

• Entertainment

‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ review: Nothing cute or harmless about this ‘Boy’

There are fleeting moments of inspiration, but you’ve seen this type of film before — done better. Rating: 1.5 stars out of 4.

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Marc Webb’s “The Only Living Boy in New York” is not nearly as cute as it thinks it is.

Thomas (Callum Turner) is a disaffected youth living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to spite his Upper West Side parents (Pierce Brosnan and Cynthia Nixon). He thinks he’s entitled to any woman he wants, so when Kiersey Clemons’ Mimi rejects him, he embarks on a quest to make her want him back. This involves getting not-so-sage advice from Jeff Bridges’ marble-mouthed W.F. and, eventually, doing the do with his father’s mistress, Johanna (Kate Beckinsale).

You’ve seen this sort of movie before. New York is a character. People whine about the death of Manhattan, saying things like, “SoulCycle is the only soul this city has left.” Conversations take place on rooftops or in the rain. And, inexplicably, everyone smokes. These movies are ubiquitous. They’re fun to laugh at and often harmless.

Movie Review ★½  

‘The Only Living Boy in New York,’ with Callum Turner, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, Kiersey Clemons, Jeff Bridges. Directed by Marc Webb, from a screenplay by Allan Loeb. 88 minutes. Rated R for language and some drug material. Several theaters.

But “The Only Living Boy in New York” is not harmless.

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“You shouldn’t let her do that to you,” one character tells Thomas about Mimi, positioning Thomas as the victim and Mimi, because she changes in front of him and slept with him once, as the cruel seductress. Later, Thomas tells W.F., “I should be on a beach with Mimi … naked.” In Thomas’ eyes, Mimi should be his. Though she says she doesn’t, Mimi clearly wants him, he believes. He’s just got to keep pushing, keep asking, keep kissing her without her consent, until she figures it out.

Thomas is rape culture personified. And yet we’re supposed to be on his side because he’s “sweet.”

There are some fleeting moments of inspiration — the music by Rob Simonsen is a master class in sudsy melodrama, and Nixon turns in a great performance — but “The Only Living Boy in New York” is rotten to its Big Apple core.

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Film Review: ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’ Just Serviceable

(Photo Credit: Roadside Attractions) 

Serviceable 

In the movie “The Only Living Boy in New York,” Thomas (Callum Turner, “ Assassin’s Creed ”) aspires to be a successful author.

As a child, when he presented his essays to his publisher father Ethan (Pierce Brosnan, “ The November Man ”), his dad did not seem impressed to say the least.

Ethan referred to Thomas’ writings as serviceable but not overly impressive.

The same description applies to “The Only Living Boy in New York.”

While the movie is O.K. with an intriguing plotline and clever dialogue, it only rises to the level of serviceable, which can translate into average, ordinary or decent.

In “The Only Living Boy in New York,” Thomas is an awkward young man with a love of books and love for a woman who is already taken.

The only person that truly gets Thomas is his love interest Mimi (Kiersey Clemons).

And although Mimi and Thomas enjoyed a magical one-night stand on Aug. 8, Mimi is not as interested in a relationship as Thomas is.

Mimi is crazy about Thomas, but she is in a long distance relationship with her rocker boyfriend.

When Mimi tells Thomas that she is not interested in a relationship it devastates Thomas.

However, that devastation leads to a mentor/mentee relationship with his new neighbor W.F. Gerald (Jeff Bridges).

Although Thomas has just met W.F., he finds it easier to talk to him than to talk to his own father who is not impressed with his choices in life or his lack of career direction.

Thomas’ relationship with his father is like a more intense version of the father-son relationship between Jackson (Morris Chestnut) and Fred (Clifton Powell) in the 2001 film “The Brothers.”

W.F. takes young Thomas under his wings, giving him writing advice, family advice and relationship advice.

However, when W.F.’s advice ultimately leads to an affair with the much older Johanna (Kate Beckinsale), the affair could ruin his friendship with Mimi and his relationship with his parents.

Actually, Thomas’ actions have the potential of totally ripping the family apart if he is not careful.

Screenwriter Allan Loeb does a clever job with the script of “The Only Living Boy in New York.”

Loeb takes an explosive plotline and combines it with witty dialogue like Mimi saying that New York has lost some of its soul over the years and that Philadelphia is the worst neighborhood in the “Big Apple.”

“The Only Living Boy in New York” features appearances from some of the most recognizable faces in the game like Debi Mazar (“Jungle Fever”) and Tate Donovan (“The O.C.”) along with Cynthia Nixon (“Sex and the City”) who plays Thomas’ mother Judith.

However, “The Only Living Boy in New York” got off to a boring start, unfortunately, and the intensity of the rest of the film cannot make up for the lackluster start.

But fortunately for Thomas, he finds out that his writings might be more than just serviceable and that might make up for the lack of direction in life he has shown.

Unfortunately it does not make the movie “The Only Living Boy in New York” more than just serviceable.

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The Only Living Boy in New York is a living bore: EW review

In The Only Living Boy in New York , lead actor Callum Turner looks so much like an American Gigolo -era Richard Gere that, once you’ve clicked into the resemblance, it’s all you can see. Even down to the enigmatic-smile-and-look-away technique in Gere’s acting, pointed out memorably once by Steve Coogan in The Trip . Like Gere, Turner ( Green Room ) might very well mature into a more interesting onscreen presence. But unfortunately, there’s no way to know that from this twee, turgid drama set in an uptown fantasyland version of Manhattan.

Turner plays Thomas, the privileged and brooding adult son of Ethan (Pierce Brosnan) and Judith (Cynthia Nixon), who passes his days by browsing through rare book shops and pining for a sweet lady friend (Kiersey Clemons). While in a club one night, Thomas spots his dad on a romantic outing with a beautiful woman (Kate Beckinsale) and unloads all of his concerns on a vagabond neighbor (Jeff Bridges).

Naturally, there’s a lot of staring out of windows, folk music, precious literary references, inane chatter about New York having lost its soul, and Thomas walking in the rain without an umbrella. The script by Collateral Beauty writer Allan Loeb siphons from the worst of Woody Allen — what male under 35 in America uses the phrase “making love”? — while also involving the characters in so many dumbfounding plot coincidences that the story takes on the aura of parody. But that would require a degree of brio, which is sadly lacking in the derivative effort by (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb.

The one cast member who at least puts a bit of bounce in the film’s step is Bridges, imbuing his supporting role with a combination of lightness and gravitas. Despite the silly and sentimental nature of his dialogue, Bridges, in this wondrous emeritus phase of his career, sells every single line. Well, almost every. At one point in the film, his character says to Thomas, “And you said your life was boring?” It is, Dude. It is. C–

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The Only Living Boy in New York

2017, r, 88 min. directed by marc webb. starring callum turner, kate beckinsale, pierce brosnan, jeff bridges, cynthia nixon., reviewed by steve davis , fri., sept. 1, 2017.

The too-too-precious title flashes like a cautionary traffic sign. Warning: Pretentiousness and Pedantry Ahead. The Only Living Boy in New York takes place in the rarified world of Manhattan privilege, a world in which the well-to-do (and an obligatory Wallace Shawn) attend dinner parties in dining rooms the size of studio apartments and drink expensive bottles of Pinot Noir as they wittily bemoan New York City’s current lack of mystery, a soullessness evidenced by the outcropping of Urban Outfitters on every corner and the lamentable demise of CBGB, a punk club they once read about in the Village Voice but never set foot in. It’s a world in which emotionally fragile wives and mothers harboring deep secrets surreptitiously read novels on benches in Central Park. It’s a world in which aimless sons stalk their father’s much younger mistresses and then sleep with them for reasons that would stump even Freud. It’s a movie in which star-crossed lovers engage in intense conversations with desperate questions such as “Do you love him?” followed by weary responses like “Define love.” And all this without even mentioning the elderly Salinger-esque writer who sits barefoot in his unfurnished Lower East Side room and drunkenly gives paternal-like advice (a clue!) to the lovelorn. Watching this parade of insufferables, you wonder: Who are these people? And more pointedly: Who could possibly give a rat’s ass about any of them?

As the floundering young Thomas of the title, the dorkily handsome Callum Turner is utterly charmless, his predominant expression being the petulant half-smirk of a spoiled brat. You never feel an ounce of sympathy for his character’s emotional predicaments, most of which are self-inflicted. But the blame doesn’t rest entirely on Turner’s broad shoulders. Marc Webb’s direction lacks the buoyant inspiration of earlier work like 500 Days of Summer , and the dramatic (mis)construction of Allan Loeb’s screenplay exists solely for the purpose of an anticlimactic revelation clumsily unveiled at the end of the film. Having to endure these self-absorbed New Yorkers for 90 minutes is hardly worth this meh twist. All that navel-gazing, and so much lint.

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Marc Savlov, April 14, 2017

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Jan. 19, 2024

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The Only Living Boy in New York , Marc Webb , Callum Turner , Kate Beckinsale , Pierce Brosnan , Jeff Bridges , Cynthia Nixon

By Jesse Green

For many young misfits and wannabes, “The Outsiders,” published in 1967, is still a sacred text. Written by an actual teenager — S.E. Hinton drafted it in high school — it spoke with eyewitness authority to teenage alienation. Even if its poor “greasers” and rich “socs” (the book’s shorthand for society types) now seem like exhibits in a midcentury angst museum, their inchoate yearning has not aged, nor has Hinton’s faith that there is poetry in every soul.

These tender qualities argue against stage adaptation, as does Francis Ford Coppola’s choppy, murky 1983 movie. (It introduced a lot of young stars, but it’s a mess.) The material doesn’t want sophisticated adults mucking about in it or, worse, gentling its hard edges for commercial consumption. Harshness tempered with naïveté is central to its style and argument. To turn the novel into a Broadway musical, with the gloss of song and dance that entails, would thus seem a category error worse even than the film’s.

And yet the musical version of “The Outsiders” that opened on Thursday has been made with so much love and sincerity it survives with most of its heart intact. Youth is key to that survival; the cast, if not actually teenage — their singing is way too professional for that — is still credibly fresh-faced. (Five of the nine principals are making their Broadway debuts.) That there is no cynical distance between them and their characters is in itself refreshing to see.

Also key to the show’s power is the director Danya Taymor’s rivetingly sensorial approach to the storytelling, even if it sometimes comes at a cost to the story itself. Many stunning things are happening on the stage of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater — and from the sobs I heard the other night, in the audience, too.

Some of those sobs came from teenagers, who can’t have seen in recent musicals many serious attempts at capturing the confusions of youth. Though witches, princesses and leaping newsboys can be entertaining, their tales are escapes from reality, not portraits of it. From the start, “The Outsiders” is gritty — literally. (The stage is covered with synthetic rubber granules that kick up with each fight and footfall.) There is no sugarcoating the facts as Hinton found them: Her Tulsa, Okla., is an apartheid town , the greasers subject to brutal violence if they dare step into the socs’ territory or, worse, lay eyes on their girls.

But the unavoidable cross-clan romance — between the 14-year-old greaser Ponyboy Curtis (Brody Grant) and the soc Cherry Valance (Emma Pittman) — is something of a MacGuffin here. The score, by Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance of the folk duo Jamestown Revival, working with Justin Levine, gives them just two songs, neither really about love.

The musical is more interested in the greasers themselves, in various permutations. There’s the fraternal romance of the full gang, as in “West Side Story”; the lyrics of their establishing number, “Grease Got a Hold,” will sound familiar. (“Play it cool, little brother, and you’ll have it made.”) There’s the veneration of their scary alpha, Dallas (Joshua Boone). And there’s the literal brotherhood of the Curtis boys. The oldest, Darrel (Brent Comer), has sacrificed his hopes of escape to care for Ponyboy and Sodapop (Jason Schmidt) after the death of their parents in a car crash.

The central relationship, though, is between Ponyboy and Johnny Cade (Sky Lakota-Lynch), a 16-year-old already bearing a life’s worth of sorrow. It is they who meet the soc girls at the drive-in, who get attacked by the girls’ letter-jacketed menfolk, who go on the lam after an act of self-defense and draw spiritually closer (there are no homoerotics) in the tragedy that ensues.

I’m glad to say the musical doesn’t stint on that tragedy; the book by the playwright Adam Rapp (with an assist from Levine) goes everywhere the novel does. A rumble, a murder, a suicide and a fire are just some of the stops on its trail of tears.

But depicting all these big events while also making room for a full slate of songs has required some compromises in a show that (I can’t believe I’m saying this) may be too short at 2 hours and 25 minutes. The novel’s first-person point-of-view, retained here as direct-to-audience narration by Ponyboy, feels like a too-expedient trade-off, drawing us out of the immediate action into some implied future. Even so, in the second act especially, incidents butt up against one another with insufficient connective tissue; it’s bone against bone.

The songs are squeezed too — a shame because many are lovely. Jamestown Revival has just the right sound for the material, blending guitar-based folk and foursquare period rock into classic balladry for emotional high points. (They really come through with “Stay Gold,” a gorgeous 11 o’clock yearner for Johnny and Ponyboy.) But as is common for theatrical newcomers, their style doesn’t offer the ear or the drama enough variety, and the lyrics are too generic and gangly to further character development.

If the impact of the songs is intermittent, the design and flow of “The Outsiders” is endlessly effective. Though this is the first musical Taymor has directed, she brings with her from plays like “ Pass Over ” and “ Heroes of the Fourth Turning ” a gift for complexities of pain and varieties of darkness.

Befitting the milieu, the set, by the design collective AMP and Tatiana Kahvegian, is modest: a tractor tire, a junker car, a bunch of wooden boards. But it reconfigures itself as fast as the characters’ febrile emotions, the tire becoming a fountain, the car a bed, the boards a bier.

Beyond that, it’s hard to separate the design disciplines here, especially in the devastating, rain-soaked climactic rumble, which, though aestheticized, remains brutal with its time-lapse mayhem. Staged by the choreographers Rick and Jeff Kuperman, its effectiveness is as much a matter of the lighting by Brian MacDevitt, projections by Hana S. Kim, costumes by Sarafina Bush and special effects by Jeremy Chernick and Lillis Meeh. As for sound, it’s hard to describe the astonishments Cody Spencer puts in our ears: what a child hears when his parents brawl, what it sounds like inside a concussion, how a car roars in memory.

Given its subject, point-of-view, author and even its title, “The Outsiders” should not benefit so much from the expertise of insiders. To the extent it succeeds anyway, it’s because it offers faithful service to a story that is sometimes almost embarrassingly sincere. How many musicals unblushingly quote Robert Frost? (“Stay Gold,” a reference to one of the novel’s most famous lines, is drawn from Frost’s poem “ Nothing Gold Can Stay .”) How many make a song of Dickens’s “Great Expectations,” and in doing so create them?

It’s a strange paradox of Broadway that its bigness, when used humbly, can honor quite delicate ideas. Whether it can sustain them is another story. In “The Outsiders,” they are not sustained; the structural problems mean its achievements don’t stick. But they’re still achievements, and a show need not be for the ages to be for the moment. In that sense it’s fair, citing Frost, to call it golden — nature’s “hardest hue to hold.”

The Outsiders At the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, Manhattan; outsidersmusical.com . Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.

An earlier version of this review in one instance misidentified the folk duo that wrote the score for “The Outsiders.” It is Jamestown Revival, not Johnstown Revival.

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Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. He writes reviews of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, regional and sometimes international productions. More about Jesse Green