Little Manhattan

 

Picture: C     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Film: C

 

 

In another attempt to do a film about childhood and growing up that backfires, Mark Levin’s Little Manhattan (2005) cannot escape the shadow of The Wonder Years and similar storytelling about a young boy becoming hormonal.  This is supposed to be cute, but the Jennifer Flackett screenplay lacks an understanding of young men and has a strange problem of not knowing where to fall between childlike, childish and even certain degrees of oversexed.  The result is that any innocence is too skewed for this to work well.

 

John Hutcherson is not bad as Gabe, while Charlie Ray is given more character development as Rosemary than a male-penned script might have.  However, the film may have worked better from Rosemary’s point of view.  This surprisingly does not add up to any gender confusion, but also does not add up to anything that we have not seen before.  It is an interesting failure, though might only be suitable for near pre-teens and up.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 x 1 image is much softer than one would have imagined, with a real lack of detail and color that is not the greatest.  Cinematographer Tim Orr tries to make this look interesting and I will give him the benefit of the doubt that this looked better in 35mm.  He previously shot the engaging and underrated David Gordon Green film George Washington in J-D-C Scope (on DVD from Criterion) and shot all of Green’s other films as well like Undertow, reviewed elsewhere on this site.  The choice of him to shot this makes sense, even when the film does not.  Extras include deleted scenes, trailers and two featurettes.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo