After the 1970s and 1980s, a strange thing happened in cinema depicting New York as “the invisible character”: instead of making it appear as a rightly sinister milieu that had the potential to destroy all who foolishly chose to let it envelop them, a shift toward the plucky, feel good rom-com in the 1990s led to the sudden depiction of NYC as a “magical” place where anything–most especially love–could happen. The surreal nature of these types of narratives only escalated with the advent of the early and mid-00s, most notably when the Olsen twins felt inclined to get in on the “magic” portrayal of New York (though they certainly set the bar higher than what Lindsay Lohan offered us in 2006’s Just My Luck).
With their last onscreen collaboration together, 2004’s New York Minute, the duo pulled out all the stops in terms of reinventing the wheel of modern cheese. From meet-cutes involving the tearing of a skirt to the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off-reminiscent pursuit of a man with no life of his own (Eugene Levy) who pursues one of our heroines for truancy to the unfortunate cameo (though it’s really far too long of an appearance to be deemed as such) of Simple Plan, there is no holding back on the part of director Dennie Gordon (a rare female in the industry also responsible for What A Girl Wants) and writers Emily Fox, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage in terms of just how hooey it can get in terms of depicting the city as a place where everything easily falls into your lap so long as you’re willing to endure a slight bit of (white girl-level) inconvenience.
And the first inconvenience on the list for twin sisters (what else?) Roxy (Mary-Kate Olsen) and Jane (Ashley Olsen) Ryan is being kicked off the train on their way from Syosset in Long Island to the city. With both parties having urgent business to attend to in Manhattan (for Jane it’s a scholarship interview she’s been preparing for “her whole life,” while for Roxy, it’s the embarrassing and free-flowing admission of needing to get to a Simple Plan video shoot on time), they decide, in a rare moment of weakness, to collaborate with one another to achieve their respective aims. Considering the rather unsettling casting of Dr. Drew as their father (much to Bob Saget’s–who also briefly appears in the movie to flash a look disapproval at them as they run past–dismay), it’s no wonder the duo tries their best to ignore having familial ties of any kind, let alone to each other. As in the past with twin movies that enjoy employing the shtick of, “How can two girls who look so similar be so different?,” so, too, does this screenplay favor the accenting of Roxy and Jane’s clashing personalities, the former a laid-back “punk rock” sort (though neither Metallica nor Simple Plan are indications of this) with zero college ambitions and the latter an overachieving cheerleader, academic and young Republican. The only place for two beings so diverse? Why, New York, of course!
What’s more, in keeping with the cracked out Home Alone 2: Lost In New York sense of geography of the town, at one moment the sisters are in Bryant Park before descending into the subway where suddenly they’re fighting Andy Richter (who plays at a Mickey Rooney for the 00s villain/limo driver named Bennie Bang) on a platform that flagrantly touts a JMZ to Queens stop. From a “bodega” in Bryant Park (not that those really exist in any non-bougie form) to Flatiron with ease, there is no respect for cartography in this movie, just as there isn’t in most “Hollywood-ified” versions of New York. And no, 59th and 9th is not Midtown despite being called as much by a person for some reason reporting on the Simple Plan music video as though it were newsworthy. Also lacking in the respect department is any kind of attempt at reverence for originality as from one (New York) minute to the next, Roxy steals the Mentos commercial idea by turning Jane’s shoes into flats when one of the heels breaks off and then slaps her, Cher to Nicolas Cage-style, and screams, “Snap out of it!”
When there are brief attempts at “smart,” “quippy” dialogue, it tends to be lazy, relying on then current figures over saturating pop culture as Roxy talks their way into the Plaza by saying, “I’m Paris, this is Nicky.” Then again, maybe there is something even more latently incisive about that statement than we know, for everyone is so quick to see blonde white girls as looking the same and having nothing to offer–least of all intellectually–other than a vag (see: the plight of the white girl).
No one can accuse Jane of not being intelligent though, at least in the book smart way that finds her relying primarily on Roxy for most of their fraught with hijinks day, which frequently finds one or both of them grappling with a wardrobe malfunction (how else could it be justified to cater to the then all too important male gaze?) that “forces” them to run around in hotel towels for a fair amount of Act Two.
To be sure, no movie about New York set in the mid-00s would be complete without a touch of “meant to be” romance. And both twins are accordingly furnished with potential fuck toys in the way of Jim “the bike messenger” (Riley Smith) for Jane and Trey (Jared Padalecki, coming off his Gilmore Girls high) the female senator’s son for Roxy. Both are effortlessly smitten for no apparent reason other than seeking to achieve the dream of every boy to make good on the promise of both Olsens finally being “legal” in 2004. So smitten are they, in fact, that each one essentially chases the girl of his dreams across the city at any given scene throughout the increasingly aberrant yet totally predictable narrative.
This, however, does not top off the true mark of an 00s movie set in New York, the kind that must assure its viewers that your soul won’t be raped and pillaged by any attempt to “make it” there so you can make it anywhere (even though, truth be told, NYC is one of the easiest place to “succeed” these days). No, New York Minute is not truly complete without a somewhat racially offensive encounter at the House of Bling in Harlem, where Big Shirl (Mary Bond Davis) caters to their desperation like some sort of servant and then gives them various looks that would send constant accusers of cultural appropriation vomiting everywhere. To boot, she gives them their services “on the house,” bowing down to white girl power in the 00s as no black woman of Harlem in real life would.
But hey, mildly offensive and non sequitur scenes are a small tradeoff for the audience to pay when it means they’ve quenched their thirst for believing that New York fulfills all of its antiquated “Empire State of Mind” promises.
