Lymelife
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, R, 95 m, 2008
Directed by Derick Martini. Stars Alec Baldwin, Kieran Culkin, Rory Culkin, et al.

After only just bearing the loads that were Little Miss Sunshine and Revolutionary Road (though some of the performances in the latter were terrific), the last thing I’m going to feel inspired to crow about is another movie about suburban dysfunction. In Derick Martini’s Lymelife, there are echoes of Ordinary People (which was acclaimed but I found to be patchy, imperceptive, and dry as a husk of wheat), The Ice Storm (which was acclaimed but I found to be as lethargic as Lawrence Kasdan’s The Accidental Tourist and as loathsome as Todd Solondz’s Happiness), and American Beauty (which was acclaimed but I found to be just plain dumb). The so-called “seamy underbelly” of America’s ‘burbs was thoroughly plumbed in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and though it may speak to my penchant for the avant-garde, I believe it’s the only film on the subject that’s worth seeing. (God knows it’s the only one with any balls, though Bob Balaban’s Parents is not without its moments.) There isn’t anything terribly original about Lymelife, but at least it’s not as vapid as American Beauty or as rhythmically measured as The Ice Storm—it has a scrap of wit and just enough get up and go to keep you from becoming dead to the world. (I must admit that the first ten minutes or so gave me a brutal case of the nods; everything felt too sardonic, too self-consciously quirky, too damned indie cool to keep me happily engaged.) This is Martini’s freshman effort (he’s working from a script that he co-wrote with his brother, Steven), and it’s not a bad debut by any stretch. For having only three weeks to shoot this thing, Martini achieves a fluidity that one normally associates with more seasoned directors. Unfortunately, the less than stellar cast (save for the beautiful Timothy Hutton, who was the only good thing to come out of Ordinary People) undermines his efforts. I mean, nobody but nooobody is going to get all fired up to watch a show that stars two members of the Culkin clan. But such are the drawbacks of working on a shoestring budget; the Haley Joel Osments and Freddie Highmores of the world can only be had by moviemakers with access to the United States Bullion Depository. Still, most of the players—even Alec Baldwin, for God’s sake—make it to the final curtain without embarrassing themselves too much. What is embarrassing is the jingly, happy-go-lucky score (which is sometimes evocative of Hans Zimmer’s music from True Romance); it keeps us at an emotional distance (the filmmakers seem uncomfortable with sentiment, or perhaps they just think it’s square) and moves us to giggle even when there’s nothing funny going on—at least nothing that a discriminating viewer would find funny. I have no doubt that teenagers (what with their smirking, fuck-it-all attitudes) and self-loathing whites (well, the liberal ones, anyway) will have a knee-slapping good time.

In Lymelife, the serenity of a woodsy Long Island community has been compromised by an influx of Lyme disease-carrying tics. (We’re at the tail-end of the Carter years here, so we have to be reminded of all those tacky clothes and unflattering ‘dos—my least favorite being the one in which the hair is parted down the middle and feathered on either side.) One of the featured suburbanites, Charlie (Hutton), contracted the illness while he was out deer hunting, so now he spends his days stumbling around the neighborhood in a feverish haze. (In an attempt to look less romantic and more pathetic, Hutton wears rumpled duds, a very bad mustache, and greasy hair matted against his forehead.) His wife, Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), is a real estate agent who’s committing adultery with her business partner, Mickey (Baldwin, who gets paunchier by the day). When Mickey’s better half, Brenda (Jill Hennessy), learns of the affair, she kicks him out of the house. This is the last thing Mickey and Brenda’s youngest son, Scott (Rory Culkin), needs right now; he’s already knee-deep in the sort of crap boys have to slog through in order to reach manhood. Learning that his dad isn’t exactly the embodiment of Herculean uprightness that he thought he was only fosters his disillusionment, but even that isn’t going to deter our little hero from his primary mission: scoring his fist piece of ass. The cuckolded Charlie, whose brain we can almost hear sizzling, has the scope of his hunting rifle set on Mickey, while Scott has the head of his penis set on Charlie’s precocious daughter, Adrianna (Emma Roberts). But it won’t be easy getting into this girl’s pretty, pink panties, especially after the schoolyard toughie takes him down to Chinatown right in front of her. Worse, his older brother, Jimmy (Kieran Culkin), who’s happening through town while on leave from the Army, puts the bully in his place, showing Scott up in front of his object of affection and leaving him to feel about as emasculated as the unfortunate Charlie feels when he spies Mickey shtupping Melissa. In essence, Scott’s life sucks (as it does for most kids his age), but that’s why they call ‘em growing pains. And yet the filmmakers seem to be suggesting that these characters—whether they have Lyme disease or not—are all sick, that pursuing the American Dream is a soul-sucking exercise in futility. I must say, this is a theme that’s starting to make me sick. As someone who grew up in suburbia, I can attest to the fact that it’s anything but the hotbed of perversion and banality that we see represented time and time again in modern movies. (And it’s certainly not populated by the MILFs who hop from pillow to post every week on TV’s “Desperate Housewives.”) If anything, suburbia is kind of dull, but its relative security permits children to engage their imaginations. (Is Steven Spielberg the only filmmaker who gets this?) I don’t know what childhood was like for the Martini bothers (though I’m guessing it was nothing as horrific as what Laura Palmer endured in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me), but they’re able to draw humor out of some of the more depressing anecdotes—and it’s not the cheap, spiteful humor that turned me off to American Beauty. Most of the comedy in Lymelife is underplayed, and yet there are a few laugh-out-loud moments, which is a few more than what you’ll find in an anxious gag fest like Epic Movie. I particularly liked the barroom scene in which Charlie fucks mercilessly with Mickey’s head, though I wasn’t crazy about the obviousness of its ending. There’s also a hilarious reference to “M*A*S*H” when Scott discovers that his brother isn’t living the life of G.I. Joe in the Army, but rather working as a communications specialist. “Are you kidding me,” Scott asks him in disbelief. “You’re like Radar?” It’s one shattered illusion after another for this poor kid. 

It’s easy to see why Martin Scorsese wanted to serve as Lymelife’s executive producer: He shares the Martinis’ love of character-based drama. (When Scott practices his tough guy act in front of his bedroom mirror, we can’t help but think of Taxi Driver.) But most of the characters that make up Lymelife aren’t as compelling as those wounded souls you meet in a Scorsese picture—they’re inaccessible, like the little plastic people that are placed around the model suburb in Mickey’s office. Lymelife is seen largely from Scott’s perspective, but despite the character’s sleepy-eyed passivity, Culkin keeps this often-unfocused coming-of-age story from going off the rails. He’s not repellent like Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko or Paul Dano in Little Miss Sunshine or Daryl Sabara in April Showers—he has some sparkle. And, most importantly, he’s likable (or at least as likable as somebody so clueless can be). The movie itself is likable, but I doubt it has much of a shelf life. Then again, most movies don’t have much of a shelf life. 

October 5, 2009

© Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.