New York Minute

This movie cruises along the Avenue of Dumbness for the first hour and ten minutes or so, and then it suddenly becomes entertaining during the House of Bling scene, in which Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, as hapless twins in the city Jane and Roxy Ryan, are given makeovers by a group of over-the-top urban stylists. Roxy calms her panicking sister down by throwing a glass of water in her face, and Jane’s answer, “Thank you. I wasn’t thirsty,” had me laughing my ass off on the couch. The hair salon antics from then on (despite the pretty dumb makeovers themselves) are genuinely funny, and the movie from then on is genuinely entertaining--for the last twenty minutes.

The plot is this: Jane and Roxy are opposites—Jane the uptight scholar, Roxy the rocker chick class-cutter. The girls wind up in New York on the same day when Jane travels downtown to give the speech of her life in a competition for an Oxford fellowship and Roxy heads to the city too to take part in a Simple Plan video shoot and promote her band. Meanwhile, Roxy is being chased by a gung-ho truant officer played amusingly (despite the bad writing) by Eugene Levy. Disasters strike and the hostile sisters must work together to get through the day.

Soon after the House of Bling, another shock arrives in the form of a surprisingly affecting dramatic scene between the Olsens. I even found myself tearing up a little as the twins fought with tears in their eyes. Where did that scene come from?

After that, Andy Richter’s character, the very white “first adopted son” of Ma Bang, a Chinese dealer of pirated movies and music, becomes genuinely funny with his affected Chinese accent, whereas earlier in the movie the character was just … you guessed it, dumb (no matter how much I wanted to find him funny). Who turned the switch? Add to that a very funny scene between Levy and a pair of tourists from Minnesota, and another funny scene involving said tourists at the fellowship competition.

In the end, this movie may have just enough heart to earn it “So bad it’s good” status down the road. The puzzling presence of truly entertaining actors such as Levy, Richter, Darrel Hammond, and Andrea Martin (and an inspired “Wink wink” moment with Bob Saget) helps.

Grade: C-