Autumn in New York (2000)

“Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but in the real world… where I live… there’re only two kinds of love stories. Boy loses girl and girl loses boy. That’s all there is. Somebody always gets left behind. You try to avoid that, you’ll end up an old man toastin’ yourself with egg nog in the mirror on Christmas Eve. You’ll end up dying in your own arms.” – John

Number of Times Seen – Twice (17 Jan 2002 and 17 Apr 2019)

Brief Synopsis – A womanizing aging bachelor gets into more trouble than he can handle when he falls in love with a woman more than half his age.

My Take on it – This is a film that I recall seeing on DVD a long time ago and didn’t recall much about it besides the overall premise.

Unfortunately, it’s a really unrealistic romance story that doesn’t manage to work on any level.

Even with great actors in the leads with the star caliber of Richard Gere and Winona Ryder doesn’t help because the two of them have such terrible chemistry together that it hinders things more than helps it especially since we are suppose to believe that they are meant to fall madly in love with one another.

The story moves along in a very uninteresting way that doesn’t work very well.

The story itself moves in a very predictable arc which doesn’t allow for the viewer to care much about the characters or the situations they get themselves into.

There are numerous side plots in the film which are quite crazy and they only help to make things much more confusing and convoluted since they add so many plot holes to the already silly premise.

Bottom Line – Pretty unrealistic romance story. Gere and Ryder have terrible chemistry together and that hurts this film so much because it’s so hard to actually believe that they are suppose to fall in love here. The way that the story moves along is not done in an interesting manner and they make things much too predictable for its own good which also makes the viewer not care about the characters or what will happen to them at all. This movie has lots of crazy side plots thrown in for good measure but they just makes things even more confusing and convoluted because they end up just creating too many plot holes.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Not screened in advance for critics. Both Richard Gere and Winona Ryder spoke out publicly against this move, saying it damned the film’s credibility. MGM countered that the reason for the action was that they didn’t want critics spoiling the film’s “surprise” ending. (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (3/10)