2 Days in New York

Marion (Delpy) is a new mom, but has broken up with Jack (2 Days in Paris). She leans heavily on co-worker Mingus (Chris Rock). Eventually they get together, but her dysfunctional family is coming....

This is Julie Delpy's sequel to her '2 Days in Paris'. The family is still the oversexed, inappropriate mess from the last film. Chris Rock is a little more put together than Jack, and basically plays the straight man in this. The same thing happens in both films. So it's inevitable that this feels less original. That is until we get to the soul.

The soul scene with Vincent Gallo is hilarious. I wish that Julie Delpy had pushed it more by showing the physicality. However, I think Chris Rock struck the wrong tone in the scene right after Vincent Gallo. It was time to push the comedy, but he kept it playing straight. Nevertheless, Julie Delpy was way out there and it was fun to see. This film is charming and funny. There is a bit of Woody Allen in this.

I think it's hilarious that some of the reviewers chastise the FRENCH Julie Delpy for portraying French people abroad in an unbelievable and unflattering light. Yeah of course you are more likely to be right! Part of the charm of the movie is showing that many cultures, when travelling, behave far more informally than they do at home. The situations here are supposed to be caricatures and not politically correct plastic people and they work well. And yes, the French talk about sex a lot - it's part of their charm - and they like to embarrass each other too. These guys are supposed to be from Brittany which isn't Parisienne sophistication but rural grit and it makes for a very funny movie that doesn't contain a Allen-esque message but is great entertainment pure and simple. Don't come to the movie expecting Chris Rock standup and zaniness (great casting for that reason alone) but to be humoured in a gentle way more reminiscent of slapstick than Woody Allen. Julie Delpy writes very well and maintains a good pace as director. All in all a job well done.

A good idea before watching a film sequel would be to check out the original, imagine watching Return of The Jedi without knowing that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father (apologies if I've spoiled that for anybody). Well, I agreed to watch 2 Days in New York today without any idea that it was the follow-up to 2 Days In Paris, a French film about relationships, I found out. Horrified that I had been tricked into watching (what i assumed was) a Romance film, I was expecting the worst, but this was actually quite funny, not as funny as The Dictator, but certainly not a romance, more of a drama about mad families.

Chris Rock plays Mingus and Julie Delpy plays Marion, a couple in their late 30s who both have kids from previous relationships. They're a classic middle-class couple, living in a nice New York apartment and both with good jobs. However, Marion's family from France quickly arrives to visit her, and all sorts of madness ensues, from the younger sister who is constantly craving sex (with anyone), to the sister's boyfriend, who brings drug dealers back to the apartment. The film is like a sophisticated version of Meet The Parents, and without a doubt the only time I've seen Chris Rock in a serious role, playing a responsible guardian in the film rather than the comedian we all know and love, but it works. The film doesn't directly follow on from the original, (or so my friends told me, they could have just been lying), so you can watch it as a stand-alone film, I certainly enjoyed it. Surprisingly good.

7/10

When the movie began I turned to my fellow cinema goer and asked, is this the film??? And for the first 10 minutes we wondered if we'd made a mistake choosing this film over the other option... A kiss for Jed. But I can safely report that its well worth a watch!!! Its laugh out loud funny at times and has a heart :)Its uplifting and different. I was very impressed with Chris Rock playing a character slightly outside his comfort zone, and for taking on what I would consider to be a risky project, it certainly paid off and he was very believable as a 'real' character. anyone with interesting in-laws will appreciate and get a laugh out of this film. So go see it!!

A follow-up to Julie Delpy's first directorial effort, "Two Days in Paris," that's quite a bit more entertaining, IMHO, than the original. The premise—JD and Chris Rock are Marion and Mingus, Downtown culture workers with two slightly troubled, adorable kids—doesn't quite fulfill its promise but fans of Richard Linklater's "Before" films might want to take a chance.

The main storyline chugs along pretty nicely: the couple endures a brief visit from her elderly flowerchild father ("he says that showers deplete the immune system"), tactlesss sister and sister's doltish boyfriend. Parallel plots involving a gallery opening (she's some sort of conceptual art photog) and a colossal Lucy-style whopper she tells a neighbor to get out of a minor scrape are a little draggy, though a couple of these filler scenes have a modest payoff later on. Delpy plays pretty much the same talky, frazzled, excitable character she does in the "Before" films; Chris Rock seems a little colorless (as it were), as if he's trying too hard to escape from his standup persona (the scenes where he soliloquizes to a cardboard-cutout Obama didn't do much for me).

Delpy's been accused of being a self-hating Frenchy, but I think the point is that people tend to behave as if the stuff they do in a foreign country doesn't really go on their permanent record—Sis swans around in a T-shirt that doesn't quite cover her butt, par example, Dad takes his keys to the lustrous flanks of a stretch Hummer (back home he only does that if they're parked on the sidewalk), boyfriend Manu commits every possible faux pas. The highpoint is a scene where Mingus, who writes for the Village Voice, is trying to score points with a dark-complected White House staffer (not played by Kal Penn) they run into in a café, and the sisters immediately start bickering while Manu babbles on about Harold and Kumar going to White Castle… Not a must-see at all but definitely watchable.

PS—a reviewer down below insists that Marion's French connections don't act right b/c they're "gritty" Bretons, not Parisians. Au contraire! Both films make clear that Dad's a gallery owner, Sis a child psychologist and Manu some sort of writer; they're from Paris.