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Created Jan 02, 2014 11:54PM PST • Edited Mar 21, 2015 01:41AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Edward Burns attracted an attractive cast to Sidewalks of New York, then opened his RomCom with each telling where their character first had sex. Rosario Dawson, then Ed Burns, David Krumholtz, Brittany Murphy, Stanley Tucci and finally Heather Graham. IOW, what we have here is a starfucker’s delight.

   His NYC movie brims with Big Apple brio. Burns himself plays a Queens guy who made it big as a shit TV Producer: not a shit Producer, but a Producer of shit TV. The lovely Heather Graham sweetly plays a wife who doesn’t understand why her marriage failed. Stanley Tucci plays her hound-dog husband, a Dentist more interested in staying married than acting married. He’s perfect of course. He’s the Great Tucci.

   NYC looms large over Burns’ NY movie, especially the Twin Towers, which appear in at least half a dozen scenes. Hell, they’re on the poster above. Burns himself talks directly to the camera with the Towers over his shoulder. Sidewalks of NY was released early in 2001, five months before 9/11. Poor Edward Burns.

   He follows the RomCom playbook to a T, video store meet-cute included, turning it up to 11 on the sex talk meter. That means Sex at 2.6 and Rudeness at 3.5, more talk than action. Think of it as lesser Woody Allen, where sex addiction is the primary plot device. It makes for a good movie, albeit nowhere near a great one.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Edward Burns places himself in a love triangle with luscious Rosario Dawson and lovely Heather Graham. Nice work if you can get it.

   Stanley Tucci plays a Manhattan Dentist named Griffin who’s a sex addict. Is that perfect or what.

   Strong Supporting Cast

   • Nadia Dajani as Heather Graham’s best friend, a sister married-woman who’s discovered adultery.
   • Dennis Farina lights up the movie as a TV bigwig who fancies himself the swordsman of NY. Funny, very funny. Libby Langdon as his disgusted Make-up Girl
   • Tucci’s dental office includes Leah Gray as his long-suffering Hygienist and Timothy Jerome as his exasperated boss.
   • David Krumholtz as a divorced boy in a man’s body.
   • Brittany Murphy – the tragic one – as the cutest and dumbest student in NYU history.
   • Callie Thorne
   • Aida Turturro pops off-screen as Rosario Dawson’s sexual advisor

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

   Tucci is Perfect. Burns is Great.

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    The dialog’s just above traditional TV quality, even if there are several good laffers. “Give those bad boys a spritz, show them that you care,” being one.

    Everybody is sexually outspoken, which seems to happen in the movies a lot more than in real life. Well maybe people talk like this in Ed Burns’ life, but then he ain’t normal.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Good 3.0

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.5

    Tucci’s a sex addict whose compulsions set the entire sex comedy in motion. Sex is much more discussed than seen however.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Profane 3.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Sex talk in front of the World Trade Center makes Sidewalks of New York the kind of American movie that Osama Bin Laden railed against. His Islamism proscribes sex outside marriage, sex unconstrained by religion and religion outside Islam. To the Islamists, such blasphemies were and are worth killing and dying to stop. Thus the nearby video captures the kind of scene that inspired 9/11.

    To be clear, 9/11 was set in motion primarily by American involvement in the lands of Islam, which is how bin Laden and the Islamists see about half the world, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan and the other Stans, the Levant and much of Africa. Oh yeah, Spain, they still think Al-Andalus should be returned to them. Other than that, the Islamist believers in a 21st Century Caliphate hardly overreach at all.

    Sex stoked media like Streets of New York didn’t primarily lead the Islamists to hate the West. But juxtaposed against the Twin Towers, it was one more silver-screen straw breaking the camel’s back.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.7

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0