Lymelife (2008)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

It's the late 70's Long Island. Lyme disease is a new discovery. Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin) lives with his father Mickey (Alec Baldwin) and Brenda (Jill Hennessy). He longs for his best friend Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts). She lives with her parents Charlie (Timothy Hutton) and Melissa (Cynthia Nixon). Jobless Charlie suffers from Lyme disease and is hiding in the basement. Melissa and Mickey are struggling to sell his real estate project called Bartlettown. Scott is picked on by the school bully. Scott's volatile older brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) comes home from the Army and beats up the bully for him.It's a well-acted indie of familiar suburban family dysfunction. The Culkin brothers are terrific. Emma Roberts is compelling. The adults in the movie don't take a backseat to the kids. There isn't anything completely new but it is done confidently. This movie needs some explosiveness to get to the next level.

Lymelife good movie but like some review and mistakes said , it should be a 70's movie but so many mistakes like the school bus you see couples time not a 70's model , the mini van also RAM 250 no such way in 70's Product at the grocery way ahead , Confirmation party you see a bottle wine with barcode on it !!! not too many product with barcode product in the 70's.Not easy to make a movie from the 70's but please use the right stuff to do it , if is on the background that's one thing because sometime you can't control it , but like the school bus big focus on it wow ! Beside that good movie to watch only one time , remind me "The Ice Storm " Enjoy

I can only presume that the title "Lymelife" is a contrived pun on the word "limelight" and on the fact that an outbreak of Lyme disease plays a part in the plot. The film is a "coming-of-age" drama set on the Long Island of 1979. (It is sometimes described as a "comedy", although there was little about it which struck me as comic). The main character is fifteen-year-old Scott Bartlett, and the film charts the tangled web of relationships between the Bartletts and their neighbours the Braggs. Essentially, Scott's mother Brenda is having an affair with next-door-neighbour Charlie Bragg, while his father Mickey is having an affair with Charlie's wife Melissa. Meanwhile, Scott is dating the Braggs' daughter Adrianna. There should really be something in Leviticus to cover this situation. ("Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of the woman whose father has uncovered thy mother's nakedness and whose mother has uncovered thy father's nakedness……").Youth can be a time of joy, excitement and enthusiasm, but the film-makers, the brothers Derick and Steven Martini, like many makers of similar dramas, seem less interested in these aspects of life than in hormonally-driven teenage angst. The film is said to be autobiographical, but as the Martinis would only have been four and one years old in 1979 they presumably projected their own teenage experiences backward in time from the early nineties to the late seventies. Part of the problem lies with Rory Culkin, younger brother of Macaulay, as Scott, who seems to be perpetually shrouded in gloom and misery. (Another Culkin brother, Kieran, also appears as Scott's older brother Jimmy). It doesn't help that Culkin was actually twenty when the film was made, five years older than the character he portrays. The best of the adults is probably Alec Baldwin as Mickey, but even he cannot arouse much interest.Independently produced "coming-of-age" dramas are not all bad- indeed, there have been some excellent examples. For every "Ordinary People" or "Gregory's Girl", however, there are several dreary sagas, and it is into this latter category that "Lymelife" falls. (Timothy Hutton, the star of "Ordinary People", appears here as Charlie). The film seems to have been made primarily for connoisseurs of suburban misery. 4/10

...but that does not necessarily mean Lymelife is bad. The movie is about dysfunctional, broken families and relationships, and I (and I bet many others who watched the movie) also come from a dysfunctional, broken family and had many bad relationships. The fact, that this movie was capable of building on that and making me feel even worse is something to celebrate. Most movies doesn't even come close to inciting any emotion whatsoever, but Lymelife did. Sure, it made me feel miserable, but that just goes to show this movie had what it takes to reach it's audience. That's great.Aside from that, the movie itself is pretty average, with average actors, screenplay and story. For those who doesn't understand it, it could be dull and meaningless. But for those who did live through approximately the same s__t that's in Lymelife, they might just go home with a strange feeling...