A Rainy Day in New York

It's supposed to be a very grand romantic gesture when Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet) invites his college sweetheart Ashleigh (Elle Fanning) for a romantic weekend in New York. He has it all planned out: After Ashleigh interviews famed director Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber) for the college paper, he wants to take her out to a fancy dinner and then show her classics of old New York. The New York he loves so much. But things turn out differently than planned. The interview somehow goes completely off the rails, sending Ashleigh on a mad dash through the city with Pollard's screenwriter Ted Davidoff (Jude Law) and acclaimed movie star Francisco Vega (Diego Luna). And Gatsby meets Chan (Selena Gomez), the younger sister of his ex-girlfriend, who completely throws him for a loop with her quick-witted manner. And then the encounter he's been trying to avoid at all costs occurs: Gatsby has to face his mother (Cherry Jones), but this leads to a tangible surprise.

A Rainy Day in New York is a typical Woody Allen movie. Except that Allen himself no longer plays the lead role, having ceded it to Timothée Chalamet, who, however, plays it exactly as the young Woody Allen once did. And therein lies the problem with the film: it has some very funny and clever dialogue and nice moments - but it just doesn't offer any surprises. Allen copies himself again and again and even if he does it very well, he doesn't move even a millimeter away from the terrain he's been on for more than 40 years. And that just gets a little tiresome in the long run.

No question, the movie is really good at its core. How the characters find an unexpected new place in their lives over the course of the story, and how they noticeably develop as a result, is something Allen has written beautifully. In doing so, he has established a very charming character in Chan in particular, played convincingly by Selena Gomez. But like his main character Gatsby, the entire film seems too anchored in the past. The old Woody Allen holds on too tightly to the early Woody Allen, causing the humor to feel a bit out of place and dusty in places.

Allen has proven time and again in the past that he can do otherwise. At the same time, though, it's always clear just how much his work fluctuates in terms of quality. For every really good film, it's quite possible for a more average or even weak work to follow. A Rainy Day in New York might belong to the better average, but in the end it can't leave a lasting impression due to the great similarities to other films of the director. And that's why there is a deserved worth seeing, but not very enthusiastically pronounced.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp