Honestly, I'm a sucker for a New York story, always have been. And I love Billy Crystal like I loved my Labrador, but I'm left wondering if that affair with the Big Apple ended when Harry shacked up with Sally.
Ironically the passing of time in Crystal's script here highlights the feelings most of us will have at some point about the bewildered loss of love and life gone by. There is some definite inarguable stabs at re-creating the genies in the bottle that Crystal has been responsible for previously, but this is a scary time for those out of synch and Crystal alludes to that very feeling here, maybe more personally than he would care to admit. I mean, can you be the funny guy, I mean THE funny guy, forever?
I saw Tiffany Haddish last in the Card Counter, opposite Oscar Isaac, and she is just the handful here as she was there. More so, even, which I know sounds like a patronising stereotypical proud, black independent woman filling a pre-designed role, but hey, I didn't write the thing, or audition for it, and here we still are.
This was intermittently fun about as often as it was tragic, but probably not enough of either to be really convincing, yet it skirts ever so closely to the Hollywood idea of a Hallmark 'Sorry For Your Loss' card.
A fine attempt by Crystal as he clearly feels the increasing and speedy years whizzing by that he's sitting in the middle of. He nearly makes it too.