Movie Reviews

Comments | Recommended

Movie review: ‘Lymelife’ a coming-of-age drama with a twist

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 22, 2009

By Roger Moore

The Orlando Sentinel

Brenda Bartlett (Jill Hennessy) and son Scott (Rory Culkin) have a talk on the steps of their home in Lymelife.

A nearly perfect cast more than compensates for the over familiarity of elements of Lymelife, the umpteenth coming-of-age drama to roll out of Indiewood in recent years.

Derick Martini’s film has the gangly, awkward boy crushing on the cute girl next door, the two dysfunctional families they come from and assorted scenes with an over-compensating older brother, a bully and teens really stumbling into sex.

But it has the peerless Alec Baldwin, as an over-reaching Long Island developer dad and philanderer who goes toe to toe with a terrific Jill Hennessy as his Catholic, provincial wife. He’s subdividing the woods, building and dreaming big. She’s drinking and complaining. His every putdown begins with, “Boy, you can take the girl outta Queens …”

Their youngest son, Scott (Rory Culkin), endures bullying and the realization that his childhood sweetheart Adriana (Emma Roberts) has blossomed into somebody completely out of his league. Even a return visit by his tough-guy soldier brother (Kieran Culkin) can’t fix what ails Scott.

Adriana’s parents make a vivid portrait of a broken marriage. Cynthia Nixon brings brittle bitterness to the unfaithful breadwinner wife who has no more patience for her husband (Timothy Hutton) and his mysterious new illness — Lyme disease.

It’s 1979, and Long Island is in a Lyme disease panic, with moms duct-taping their kids’ clothes. Poor Ray (Hutton) — the avid deer hunter of the neighborhood — is the agonizing, ashen face of this deer-tick illness. He is depressed, exhausted, laid off, but keeping up appearances by wearing a tie every day, pretending to go to job interviews when all he’s really doing is hiding in the basement.

Nothing that deep happens here, from the “I won’t be like my parents” ethos to the personal crises that every character seems to suffer through. Civility breaks down, wounded people lash out by telling each other “the truth,” and the children watch and learn from it all.

The players dazzle, but cowriter-director Martini has attracted this cast with chewy roles and a sharp metaphor, a disease that tears down the veneer of normality and makes Long Island suburban life not only dull and a little ugly, but deadly.

****Lymelife

Starring: Alec Baldwin, Rory Culkin, Jill Hennessy, Cynthia Nixon, Timothy Hutton, Kieran Culkin.

Rated: R, contains profanity, sexual situations, violence, drugs.

Advertisement

Projo Video

Richmond animal behaviorist says it's about control, not punishment
Providence College's 'grunge' edition of Romeo and Juliet
Brown engineering students race cars you can compost


More Movie Reviews

Most Viewed Yesterday

Most active surveys

Updated Tues 11.10.09

Most e-mailed in the last 24 hours

Reader Reaction