REVIEW – A New York Winter’s Tale, The Best Worst Film You Will See This Year

Without being too judgemental about New York Winter's Tale, our advice to anyone reading this review would be first to go and have a look back at the work that its director Akiva Goldsman has released over the years. Now, we know every film should be judged on its own merits but that is a little difficult to do considering the director in question was responsible for producing quite the list of completely awful films like Jonah Hex, Hancock, I Am Legend, Constantine and Starsky and Hutch to name just a few. For A New York Winter's Tale, Goldsman takes over directorial duties, an area he has been mildly more successful with (when we see successful, we mean critically successful, not box office succesful because somehow he has actually managed to achieve that) considering he was involved with the interesting series, Fringe. However, the fact that he has managed to continually become employed after the run of films he has released over the last few years is an achievement in itself. Based on the book of the same name, A New York Winter's Tale tells the story of Peter Lake, a petty thief who lives in New York City. Abandoned by his mother and father at an early age in the hopes that he would have a better life, Peter is taken under the wing by Pearly Soames, a demon who works for Lucifer himself (no, we're not joking. This is the actual plot). Peter is in danger of claiming his "miracle" and so evil Pearly decides he will not let him do so. However, after he meets his new friend, the flying horse, Peter meets the one he is destined to be with, his one true love, the beautiful Beverly (still with us?) The love of his life is unfortunately suffering from consumption and Peter has only a brief amount of time to spend with her. Despite trying to keep her alive, he discovers that her love is literally keeping him alive. However, due to a fall, poor Peter has forgotten about his one true love and so spends the next century trying to remember. Yes. Really. Yes, that's the plot. There's a flying horse and a lot of miracles. Honestly, managing to condense the plot for the above two paragraphs is an achievement in itself because most of the time this film makes absolutely no sense and it is incredibly difficult to attempt to figure out what exactly is going on. Why is Russell Crowe a demon? Is Peter Lake an angel? Why is no one freaked out that this man is over 100 years old and still manages to look exactly the same as he looked in 1916? How are you supposed to pronounce Claret? Why is Russell Crowe's accent the worst thing that we have ever heard? Why is Will Smith wearing a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt in 1916? What is actually going on here? Besides trying to swim through the endless amounts of problems and questions the story presents, you will also be attempting to suffocate laughter at some of the worst lines we have ever heard an actor utter on the big screen. For example: What's the best thing you have ever stolen? I'm beginning to think I haven't stolen it yet." We found it difficult to hear that one due to the amount of blood created by our ears bleeding. In terms of the performances, the problem here is that the actors are taking the whole affair entirely too seriously. We're not sure how the actors actually managed to get through the production without laughing their heads off. On top of that, all of the actors in the film are much better than they are being made out to be; Jennifer Connelly, you are better than this. However, despite the fact that this is all terrible, this is actually hugely enjoyable, but for all the wrong reasons. Go, but please do not take it seriously.