Ever watched a film where the makers seemed to arbitrarily chuck in superfluous information about their characters to make them seem more 'rounded'; when maybe a solitary line of perceptive dialogue would get the job done a hundred times better, instead? No? Well then watch "City By The Sea" - it's a textbook outline of the syndrome I've just described... The only thing that stands out as being remotely impressive about this film is how everybody managed to take a potentially interesting story and make it so mind-numbingly boring! The characters are incredibly poorly sketched; the narrative flow seemingly all about the here and now with not a hint of visualisation in terms of backstory. The closest we come to such a concept is several bluntly obvious exchanges, nothing more.
The character relations are appallingly clumsily handled throughout, too. (We're just supposed to ASSUME before we are belatedly told that Eliza Dushku plays James Franco's sometime girlfriend, despite having until then never seen them share even a mildly intimate moment??!) If the instance in the brackets isn't enough for you, how about De Niro playing psychoanalyst to said 'girlfriend', despite her having shown up at his door perhaps 5 MINUTES earlier???! I kid you not...
The one scene that might manage to fool the unwary into thinking it's developing well takes a farcical turn for the worse when at a stroke it's suggested that the son's predisposition towards screwing up may well just be solved by De Niro simply apologising for not being a very good dad. Heartwarming stuff maybe, but unfortunately for the sake of this film, only if you're under 10 or have the mental capability of an uncommonly depressed lemming... The son in question desperately wants acceptance from his father; but better headway could only possibly be made if the audience THEMSELVES had a hope in hell of accepting what's been slapped onto the screen before their very eyes. Needless to say, they don't.
Every single arc of reasoning that can be gleaned from what we are shown is disgustingly simplistic. One can't help but pity the De Niro of these days after suffering through this tripe. A particular character is heard to utter the astonishingly cliché line: "You don't understand me!" The victim of said befuddlement is conclusively not alone; 105 minutes in, and we the audience find ourselves no nearer to comprehending anything of instructive value, either... !
(2/10 or */***** in profile ratings system.)
The character relations are appallingly clumsily handled throughout, too. (We're just supposed to ASSUME before we are belatedly told that Eliza Dushku plays James Franco's sometime girlfriend, despite having until then never seen them share even a mildly intimate moment??!) If the instance in the brackets isn't enough for you, how about De Niro playing psychoanalyst to said 'girlfriend', despite her having shown up at his door perhaps 5 MINUTES earlier???! I kid you not...
The one scene that might manage to fool the unwary into thinking it's developing well takes a farcical turn for the worse when at a stroke it's suggested that the son's predisposition towards screwing up may well just be solved by De Niro simply apologising for not being a very good dad. Heartwarming stuff maybe, but unfortunately for the sake of this film, only if you're under 10 or have the mental capability of an uncommonly depressed lemming... The son in question desperately wants acceptance from his father; but better headway could only possibly be made if the audience THEMSELVES had a hope in hell of accepting what's been slapped onto the screen before their very eyes. Needless to say, they don't.
Every single arc of reasoning that can be gleaned from what we are shown is disgustingly simplistic. One can't help but pity the De Niro of these days after suffering through this tripe. A particular character is heard to utter the astonishingly cliché line: "You don't understand me!" The victim of said befuddlement is conclusively not alone; 105 minutes in, and we the audience find ourselves no nearer to comprehending anything of instructive value, either... !
(2/10 or */***** in profile ratings system.)