Release Date: May 7, 2004
Starring: Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Eugene Levy, Andy Richter, Jared Padalecki
Directed by: Dennie Gordon
Written by: Emily Fox, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: PG (suggestive material)
New York Minute is the feature-film debut of child stars and twin sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, now (at the time of shooting) 17 years old. It seems rather late in coming, given their constantly growing product line of dolls, books, video games, and direct-to-video movies. Why it took so long for their commercial empire to reach the silver screen is anyone’s guess, but after this movie, it’s clear that their gimmick simply doesn’t work in this format. The Olsens don’t have much talent, and what they do have -- good looks -- is exploited in this film as a dirty trick to cover up the paper-thin plot and equally insipid acting. It’s not a pleasant thing to watch, especially knowing that the Olsens will probably find their way onto the big screen again, regardless of this (or any subsequent) movie’s emptiness.
Befitting a generic family comedy, the twins play characters who are exact opposites, two bickering sisters so different from one another it’s a wonder they came from the same parents. Jane (Ashely Olsen) is organized and diligent, while Roxy (Mary-Kate Olsen) wears nothing but T-shirts and jeans and skips school so much she’s always being hunted by an obsessive truancy officer named Lomax (Eugene Levy). The movie covers the day Jane must give an important speech at Columbia University and Roxy cuts class to appear in a big rock video being shot in Manhattan. Together they get in each other’s way, find tons of trouble, and continuously cross paths with Lomax and a criminal named Bennie Bang (Andy Richter) who specializes in (of all terrifying things) pirating movies and music.
Captivated? Don’t worry if you’re not, because the movie makes it plain early on that it’s not interested in entertaining anyone other than its core audience of adolescent and prepubescent girls. Levy and Richter are the only players a viewers of other demographics can relate to, but they succumb to the Olsens’ scheme without a fight, as they each play overly silly characters in contrived situations, hardly coming close to delivering on their true comic potentials. Brief but interesting appearances by “Loveline” host Dr. Drew Pinsky and Jack Osbourne (son of rock star Ozzy) are equally lost causes.
Levy and Richter play the all-too-common bumbling bad guys who constantly fail at everything in cartoonish fashion. You’ll probably forget to laugh when Levy hijacks a Winnebago to chase the girls and gets it stuck in a tight alley. And Richter, who talks with an intentionally lame Chinese accent, still hasn’t found a good place for himself after leaving late-night host Conan O’Brien’s side several years ago. He pops up randomly throughout the movie to either get urinated on by a dog, to drink a cup of laxative, or to serve as the butt of almost any old bit of immature humor.
The vast majority of the story is so weak that both of these villains are terribly stupid rather than delightfully funny. In fact, the writing is so bad, it’s literally impossible to tell the Olsen twins apart about halfway through the film, which certainly doesn’t help the dramatic aspect of the film.
Up until then it was easy to distinguish the girls by their clothes and hair, but soon enough they’re both wearing the same shirt and skimpy skirt, making it very difficult to follow who’s who. Embarrassingly enough, their acting doesn’t help, because although Jane and Roxy are supposed to be remarkably different from one another, they both end up yelling at each other and maybe trying to work things out a little, so that it’s hard to tell who is more responsible and who is more careless. It could be laid-back Roxy, who changes her attitude about life and tries to patch things up with her sister, or it could be the strong-willed Jane, who does her share to set all of this mayhem right in the end. Either way, good luck trying to figure it out.
Toward the end, the sisters find themselves in a beauty parlor, and soon they’re returned to their distinctive characters, but otherwise it’s a completely overlong and pointless makeover scene that you’d only find in a movie as shallow as this. Similarly, there’s no reason why the girls had to streak through Times Square half-naked except to promote their status as future sex objects (though it does allow for the only laugh-out-loud scene in the movie -- a cameo by the Olsens’ “Full House” costar Bob Saget). And once it’s suggested that Mary-Kate and Ashley are about to have a threesome with a senator’s hunky son (Jared Padalecki), there’s no hiding how the actresses wish to sell themselves now that they’re almost of legal age.
Aside from those suggestive moments, however, New York Minute is still rather harmless. Also, when the siblings overcome their differences, the movie reveals a hint of a purpose. But other than those very small positives, there’s really no reason to see it at all, or even for this movie to exist. In the end, maybe it’s not that surprising why no one has let the Olsen twins headline a theatrical release before now.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)