The film’s words; not mine.
Before a character utters one word in the new indie Chronically Metropolitan, it becomes incredibly clear the kind of movie it wants to be. The film which stars a number of actors who find themselves repeatedly stifled by the aspirations/illusions of being in a wannabe 2017 version of The Royal Tenenbaums with its melancholic main character, eccentric family and literary backdrop. Maybe it’s because the minds behind the film wanted so badly to fit into the mold created by Wes Anderson’s brilliant film, that it fails to work on every level it attempts to function. Switching back and forth between comedy and drama (while scoring in neither department), Chronically Metropolitan is the kind of low-budget exercise that all but gives indie films a bad name.
Centering around acclaimed young novelist Fenton (Shiloh Fernandez), Chronically Metropolitan begins with the character’s return to his New York home following a hiding out period in San Francisco. What Fenton returns to is a pot-smoking mother (Mary-Louise Parker), a philandering, alcoholic father (Chris Noth), a cynical, yet fragile sister (Sosie Bacon) as well as a former love (Ashley Benson) who is about to be married and is still mad at Fenton for using intimate details about their relationship in his debut novel.
To list all the things wrong with Chronically Metropolitan would be to spend way more time thinking about the film than it deserves. Suffice it to say that whatever cliches, gimmicks and/or stereotypes exist in the world of upper-east side Manhattanites are all accounted for here. There is the emotionally damaged mother with fashionable trappings and a penchant for pot, there’s the wild card of a father who spouts out one outrageous, yet wise, musing after another and the somewhat caustic sister who actually has feelings. Yes, all of these kinds of people are types, but director Xavier Manrique doesn’t make them anything more than that. There’s no real exploration here that dares to venture beyond the obvious traits associated with these caricatures disguised as human beings. It’s not that such attempts aren’t made because they are. The problem is that they don’t go anywhere; instead, scenes talking about feelings and frustrations remain firmly at the surface.
The saddest aspect of Chronically Metropolitan is how much promise there is to be found in the film’s central premise. An absentee son returning home from a sojourn on the West coast where he comes face to face with the past he must answer for and the people he left in it is ripe for the kind of cathartic human moments indie audiences lap up gleefully. In many ways, the film could have reached the levels of Whit Stillman, calling to mind the joys of human comedy, mixed them with a comment of growing up in a bohemian family and the dark thoughts that plague the tortured writer added in. If the main character of your film is a writer, why not have him voicing his thoughts in a poetic voiceover (or any similar method) as way to get closer to him? Is it because the filmmakers themselves never bothered to get to know Fenton to begin with? Regardless of what the answer is, what the audience is left with in the end is an uninteresting protagonist who spends the duration of the film being constantly reminded of how much he screwed everyone over and how the lives of the people he cared about are essentially worse off for having known him.
The cast of Chronically Metropolitan barely survives the material. There are some pretty decent actors here, but the script lets them down scene after scene. This is especially true in the case of Noth who is at his most cartoonish here as an insensitive literary legend who only thinks of himself. While Benson manages a couple of lovely moments, the usually dependable Parker is stranded with a character drowning in so many cliches, that it’s hard to fathom this is the same actress with so many accomplishments under her belt.
No one walks away from Chronically Metropolitan more scarred than Fernandez however, who spends half the film listening to the other characters vent and whine. The film is a far cry from the young actor’s capabilities, which were wonderfully demonstrated earlier this year in the little-seen Long Nights Short Mornings; a deep character piece that was incredibly resonant and also tapped into many of Fernandez’s more than admirable instincts as an actor. THAT film gave him a real character suffering from actual hang-ups and complexities, rather than conventions while surrounding him with an assortment of individuals with enough dimension to them to make them feel real. From scene to scene, you could easily see the actor take his character on emotional journey that was both refreshing and involving. That film was certainly worthy of an actor with Fernandez’s abilities. Chronically Metropolitan is not.
