YOU know a collection of Gotham-themed shorts by international directors is in serious trouble when the most entertaining segment is directed by Hollywood uber-hack Brett Ratner.
Not that Ratner’s sex fantasy — teenager Anton Yelchin takes druggist James Caan’s wheelchair-bound daughter (Olivia Thirlby) to her prom at Tavern on the Green and ends up losing his virginity, with her hanging from a tree in Central Park — is any more convincing than anything else going on in “New York, I Love You.”
There’s also an Orthodox woman (Natalie Portman, who makes her inauspicious directing debut in another segment about a “manny”) getting frisky with an East Asian merchant (Irrfan Khan) on Diamond Row; Bradley Cooper jumping into the back seat of a taxi with an obliging stranger and giving the driver hilariously improbable directions.
Not to mention Andy Garcia and Hayden Christensen cheerfully picking each others’ pockets in a downtown bar; Orlando Bloom as a grungy composer on the Upper West Side; and Ethan Hawke as — what else? — a jerk in SoHo.
The New York loved by these directors is pretty much limited to Manhattan, Brooklyn Heights and 30-somethings, with a token appearance by old pros Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman, sadly handed weary clichés to utter as they stroll the Coney Island boardwalk.
This is a follow-up to the much better “Paris, I Love You,” which attracted bigger-name directors, probably because their shooting schedules weren’t limited to two days, and their shorts weren’t connected by inane linking segments as if this were a hipster version of “Love, American Style.”
Besides Ratner, the best known director involved in the new edition is Anthony Minghella, who passed away before his shoot. His pretentious script, directed by Shekhar Kapur, takes place on the Upper East Side, incongruously teaming Julie Christie and Shia LaBeouf.
When “New York, I Love You” was previewed in Toronto a year ago, there were two additional segments that have since been cut. So you’ll have to wait for the DVD to see just how bad Scarlett Johansson’s directing debut is.