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75The movie is funny without being hilarious, touching but not tearful, and articulate in the way that Burns is articulate, by nibbling earnestly around an idea as if afraid that the core has seeds.
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58It's a veritable Greek chorus of wry therapeutic chatter, the touchy-feely pensées skittering over the stock dualities of adultery and fidelity, lust and devotion, narcissism and intimacy, blah, blah, blah.
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50Wears out its welcome fast because of its artistic pretensions and self-absorbed characters. You'd be better off renting "Manhattan" instead.
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50Burns has a hard time finding a central idea, some overall point that isn't borrowed or trite. Or both.
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50Despite a synthetic optimism in the script, the movie's pervasive bleakness is relieved only by some bright performances.
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30Dramatically and conceptually, the movie sits there, flat, naked and trying too hard with too little.
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75Burns' movie shows a Woody.esque affection for a certain slice of New York and its denizens (with the angst and neuroses quieted down a notch or two).
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38Though the writing doesn't work, you have to give Burns credit for shrewd direction. He gets the best performances I've seen from Graham and Murphy.
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75It's by far the best cast Burns has assembled -- so much so that, unlike his other films, he doesn't come near dominating it.
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60Isn't much more than a student film made by a talented amateur who's in over his head. Burns has a decent eye and a breezy sense of pace, and he'll make better movies if he remembers where he came from.
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38A waterlogged bagel, hardly the valentine to New York it imagines itself to be.
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50Those who teach public speaking sometimes advocate telling your audience what you're going to tell them, then actually telling them, then telling them what you've told them. Sidewalks reproves this isn't a wise path for movies.
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42Burns' trite talk and familiar romantic conflicts doesn't do any of the characters any favors. Everyone comes off flat and forced, with one notable and lovely exception: Dawson.
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60The time is right for a breezy, captivating New York romantic comedy. Sidewalks of New York is not an especially good movie, but it will do.
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75The film's flaws seem unimportant, and it passes the big test, making you want to find out what happens to these characters, even when what does happen is predictable.
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75There's a lot of talk about sex in Sidewalks of New York, but precious little of it. And that's part of the point.
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75Romantic comedies don't have to be profound when they are as appealing as this one.
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70Improves as it unfolds.
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80The chatty, romantic roundelay takes a lighthearted look at the misadventures of six in the city.
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50It makes the same misstep that Allen's comedies often do: It assumes that the lives of these people are only about sex and love, and so that's all we ever see of them. This one-and-a-half-dimensionality wears thin.
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50Though the acting in "Sidewalks" is uniformly fine, particularly among the female cast, it's hard to glimpse any meaningful vision, sly insights or cinematic flair.
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30Achieves inadvertent pathos via its own obscene irrelevance.
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50Wispy, cosmopolitan slice-of-life.
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40Burns, who made a career out of his mildly charming Irish-American rogue persona, has, with his latest and fourth feature, finally sloughed off the remaining traces of that charm, along with, apparently, the vestiges of a personality.
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30Not just instantly forgettable, but beginning to fade from memory even as its images still play across the screen.
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40Too bad it isn't quite funny enough to be mistaken for "Jackass."
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50Charming, low-key ensemble comedy that recalls the films of both John Cassavetes and Woody Allen, which is to say it's a loosely structured, quasi-improvisational saga about a bunch of New Yorkers obsessing about relationships.
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40The assumption among many when the movie was postponed was that Paramount Classics felt New Yorkers weren't emotionally equipped for something bright or frothy or vivacious. They needn't have been concerned.
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60The story is tight and engaging, the acting first-rate, the themes solid and presented without being sentimental or preachy. But let's hope his next film ("Ash Wednesday") has something new to say.