Lymelife

You may not have heard of this (I hadn’t), and I’m not sure whether to recommend that it’s worth watching. Certainly the film achieved a lot of awards and critical acclaim, and is rated 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it left me feeling largely unmoved. A teenage boy in Long Island in the 70s struggles to come to terms with the tension between his parents, being bullied at school, and his love for his next door neighbour’s daughter. Meanwhile, lyme disease is spreading in the area, and so is the subsequent paranoia. It is supposed to be ‘darkly comic’, although I hardly noticed this. As you can tell, the plot is not exactly revelatory and lyme disease doesn’t really play a prominent or meaningful part of the film. It is merely an incidental aspect of the story. Rory and Kieran Culkin are both very good as the brothers – natural and easy with each other (as you’d expect). Alec Baldwin, despite apparently having the role written for him, really feels a bit flat here (perhaps I’m too used to his character from 30 Rock, though). The film is shot with that certain filter that makes things look older and richer in tone than they really are – otherwise you’d hardly notice this was actually set in the 70s. The father’s ambitions to sell plots of land on a housing estate appears to be meaningful, but ends up revealing nothing, much like the lyme disease. This film, really, is profoundly anti-climactic – perhaps someone’s description of it as ‘darkly comic’ is just another way of saying ‘not really funny or serious’. Culkin’s relationship with the girl is rather predictable (even though she dates an older boy, she likes him really), and the ending of the film doesn’t resolve any of the important issues, but rather starts new ones. Overall, this film misses its marks in several areas and yet it would be a shame to disparage it completely, as there is value here, and the director, Derick Martini, surely has promise.