The Only Living Boy in New York lacks any soul

IT’S aspiring to follow in the footsteps of one of the most iconic movies in cinematic history but falls far short.

A CONFUSED young white man on the cusp of adulthood searches for purpose, battles ennui and beds an inappropriately older woman. Sound familiar?

Of course, one of the most glaring The Graduate allusions is in the title itself, The Only Living Boy in New York, borrowed from a Simon & Garfunkel song that also featured on the soundtrack to Garden State, another coming-of-age tale with a problematic father figure.

Directed by Marc Webb, a man whose previous work includes (500) Days of Summer, Gifted and The Amazing Spider-Man, The Only Living Boy in New York is a passable attempt at capturing that liminal moment when those endless possibilities seem just out of reach.

Thomas (Callum Turner) is the idealistic 22-year-old son of a successful book publisher, a father (Pierce Brosnan) he’s convinced doesn’t like him. He grew up in a world of Manhattan privilege and the dinners his mother (Cynthia Nixon) hosts are full of so-called interesting people from the art world.

Shacking up in a rundown apartment on the Lower East Side, a “world away” from his parents’ Upper West Side townhouse, Thomas is in love with a girl (Kiersey Clemons) who doesn’t love him back.

Scene from The Only Living Boy In New York. Roadshow Films.

One day, he sees his father at a jazz club nuzzling a woman not his mother, Johanna (Kate Beckinsale). He starts stalking Johanna, determined to warn her off for the sake of his mother’s mysterious mental ailment.

In a turn that’s not so twisty, he ends up in bed with Johanna in some kind of Oedipal revenge against his father.

Meanwhile, Thomas becomes friends with his new neighbour, W.F. (Jeff Bridges), a wise and knowledgeable man so enigmatic you might start to wonder if he’s even real.

As a character, Thomas is one of those smart, young men looking for meaning in his life, with the kind of insights that only those unburdened by practical realities wax on about.

But he, like every other character in The Only Living Boy in New York, is too thinly drawn to really get a grasp on.

A rare misstep for Jeff Bridges.

There’s no real depth to the film, only imitation. Soundtrack choices like a second Simon & Garfunkel song plus the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Herbie Hancock is aiming for substance but comes off more as affectation.

There’s an ambition here that is never realised, try as Webb did to infuse the film with that New York spirit. He certainly whips his way around enough second-tier landmarks — Bryant Park, Chinatown, Brooklyn Museum’s Beaux Arts Court and Riverside Park among them — to capture the city.

Early on in the film, at one of his mother’s dinner parties, the gathered group debate whether New York has any soul left — the kind of discussion you’d find in a Woody Allen movie — and Thomas offers a quip that the most vibrant neighbourhood in New York is Philadelphia.

That he later repeats this line to a different audience is endemic of the soullessness at the heart of this film.

Rating: 2.5/5

The Only Living Boy in New York is in cinemas from today.

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Originally published as The Only Living Boy in New York lacks any soul