Lymelife

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas
Rating (out of 5): **

My wife walked into the room and sat down while I was watching this indie dramedy period piece about a suburban family falling apart and said, "Oh, good, I love The Ice Storm." And I do, too. I can still remember the fullness of the world that Ang Lee created in that indie dramedy period piece about a suburban family falling apart through.

Alas, Lymelife is not that movie.

Lymelife so closely hews to The Ice Storm that one wonders if it came about in a parallel universe where Lee's film was a runaway hit and some savvy studio exec gave the green light to all 70's-era coming of age stories with families torn asunder by self-centered, adulterous parents.

Though that universe, to my knowledge, does not exist, this disappointing film does. Instead of a wintry tempest at the center, however, there instead is the chilling specter of Lyme disease. That's right, Lyme disease. I believe it was the filmmaker's intention that the confusing mélange of symptoms for the titular illness would stand in as the outward manifestation of the confusion the main character's sexual awakening as well as the malaise of the country at the time, and its crumbling marriages. It doesn't work.

To director Derek Martini's credit, he assembles a very impressive cast, including Alec Baldwin, Jill Hennessy, Timothy Hutton, Cynthia Nixon and two of the Culkin brothers -- Rory and Kieran. Martini co-wrote the script with his brother, Steven, and they even nabbed Martin Scorsese as an executive producer.

The cast does the best they can with poor material, which sounds far too autobiographical--so much so that one can hear the echoes of workshops the screenplay doubtlessly made its way through, where the filmmakers kept in particular lines or scenes because, though it didn't seem real to the assembled, it was real ("My Dad really did say that.") Though that's just a guess.

One of the Culkin brothers in Lymelife could be younger brother of Tobey Maguire, further making the Ice Storm parallels ever more evident. And more painful, remembering the far superior film in the draggy 95 minutes that this film takes to complete. Avoid Lymelife like you would a deer tick in the woods.