Lymelife (2008)

It's the late 70's Long Island. Lyme disease is a new discovery. Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin) lives with his father Mickey (Alec Baldwin) and Brenda (Jill Hennessy). He longs for his best friend Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts). She lives with her parents Charlie (Timothy Hutton) and Melissa (Cynthia Nixon). Jobless Charlie suffers from Lyme disease and is hiding in the basement. Melissa and Mickey are struggling to sell his real estate project called Bartlettown. Scott is picked on by the school bully. Scott's volatile older brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) comes home from the Army and beats up the bully for him.It's a well-acted indie of familiar suburban family dysfunction. The Culkin brothers are terrific. Emma Roberts is compelling. The adults in the movie don't take a backseat to the kids. There isn't anything completely new but it is done confidently. This movie needs some explosiveness to get to the next level.

I can only presume that the title "Lymelife" is a contrived pun on the word "limelight" and on the fact that an outbreak of Lyme disease plays a part in the plot. The film is a "coming-of-age" drama set on the Long Island of 1979. (It is sometimes described as a "comedy", although there was little about it which struck me as comic). The main character is fifteen-year-old Scott Bartlett, and the film charts the tangled web of relationships between the Bartletts and their neighbours the Braggs. Essentially, Scott's mother Brenda is having an affair with next-door-neighbour Charlie Bragg, while his father Mickey is having an affair with Charlie's wife Melissa. Meanwhile, Scott is dating the Braggs' daughter Adrianna. There should really be something in Leviticus to cover this situation. ("Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of the woman whose father has uncovered thy mother's nakedness and whose mother has uncovered thy father's nakedness……").Youth can be a time of joy, excitement and enthusiasm, but the film-makers, the brothers Derick and Steven Martini, like many makers of similar dramas, seem less interested in these aspects of life than in hormonally-driven teenage angst. The film is said to be autobiographical, but as the Martinis would only have been four and one years old in 1979 they presumably projected their own teenage experiences backward in time from the early nineties to the late seventies. Part of the problem lies with Rory Culkin, younger brother of Macaulay, as Scott, who seems to be perpetually shrouded in gloom and misery. (Another Culkin brother, Kieran, also appears as Scott's older brother Jimmy). It doesn't help that Culkin was actually twenty when the film was made, five years older than the character he portrays. The best of the adults is probably Alec Baldwin as Mickey, but even he cannot arouse much interest.Independently produced "coming-of-age" dramas are not all bad- indeed, there have been some excellent examples. For every "Ordinary People" or "Gregory's Girl", however, there are several dreary sagas, and it is into this latter category that "Lymelife" falls. (Timothy Hutton, the star of "Ordinary People", appears here as Charlie). The film seems to have been made primarily for connoisseurs of suburban misery. 4/10

Caught this on the BBC Friday night and got stuck immediately. Couldn't stop watching it. Great performance from Alec Baldwin and Mckulin (Home Alone's Brother)about turning of age angst and homegrown problems with parents. Soundtrack is great and I was the protagonist's age in the 70's...even bothered to watch the credits with Scorcese as producer. A quiet, sweet movie with loads of metaphors, especially the visual cross- carrying Baldwin does at the end with the flick of a white tie (like the flick of a deer's tail) at the end. Beautiful. Since I need to write more: I loved the miniature models to show suburbanite living in Long Island and how the film was edited in minute sequences which could have been freeze-framed and each interesting in their own right. Again a beautiful movie.

The symbolism is cute: miniature houses in the realtor's office represent the lives of Long Island suburbanites. Those adults are, as young Adrianna states, the phonies.I would probably have more sympathy for this film if it weren't yet ANOTHER take on the same theme: the beautiful homes--and the people who inhabit them--are better on the outside than on the inside. "Black Velvet" did it, "American Beauty" did it. Though "Lymelife" has neither the cartoon-ish graphic drama of the former, nor the urbane sophistication of the latter, it peers into the lives of these people and finds the pimples, the warts (in this case, the ticks) that reside within.To their credit, young Emma Roberts and Rory Culkin turn in fine performances; these are surprisingly round characters, and these actors play them with sensitivity and maturity. Timothy Hutton is also entertaining in and understated way. That said, I was unimpressed by Alec Baldwin and Cynthia Nixon's performances.Overall, the story contains some touching moments, but it is too often marred by awkward writing, predictable moments (yes, there is loud sex, and yes, one of the spouses IS actually in the house). Here is another film that features a dark, gloomy look at life in Wonderland, without enough reason for doing so.