Little Movie

Someone, I can’t completely remember (was it you, Rebecca?) recommended I rent Little Manhattan but it was a while ago and I forgot who or why. Last night Ben and I watched it and he started out grumbling something about why are we watching a kids movie. No less than a minute into the movie, Ben and I are cracking up pretty hard. I’m not sure this is a kids movie or a grownup movie, but it is a feel good movie, and it’s a lovely movie about a boy’s first love in my old hood of the Upper West Side of NY. Okay, well, not exactly my old hood – not the grungy version where I grew up, but the shinier version you’ll see when you visit now. In any case, I loved two things about this movie – the story aspect of it was very true-to-life I thought – the boy’s not as well-off as the girl he likes, who lives in an incredible apartment on the park. He lives with his separated parents in a crowded two-bedroom – which I’ve heard, with real estate the way it is in NY now, not uncommon at all. At one point in the movie, when we’re still waiting for him to kiss the girl, Ben cried out, “Oh, I SO know what that’s like!!! It would take me weeks just to work up to holding a girl’s hand!” But what made it especially great was that it was a NY movie very clearly, um, not shot in Toronto. Shot in NY, quite beautifully, and from what I could tell, accurately – what I mean is, I have a huge beef when I see movies that’ll have let’s say someone running around a corner on Broadway and 73rd, and then the camera cuts to him coming around the corner on what’s obviously Fifth Avenue and 17th or something. Creative license, whatever, it makes me nutty. Anyway, I barely remember even hearing of this movie when it came out, which is too bad. Check it out if you’re in the mood for a sweet surprise.