Lemon Lyme

Great individual efforts by Culkin bros Kieran and
Rory can’t save overworked indie drama Lymelife

SUBURBAN SUFFERING: Lymelife

by CHRISTOPHER SYKES

Take a couple of dysfunctional Long Island families, place them in the closest possible proximity by making them neighbours, then interlink said families with a couple cases of sexual fever. Top it all off with an overblown finale meant to leave you gasping (but failing almost laughably). Pretty standard American indie fare over the last decade or two, except Lymelife tries to spice things up with— gasp!—disease-ridden wood ticks.

Set in 1979 when both the Islanders and Star Wars didn’t suck, oft-maligned Long Island, where co-writers/directors Derick and Steven Martini grew up, comes off looking much like sanitized suburbia of American Beauty or The Ice Storm. The similarities with these films don’t stop with the setting, as Lymelife loans the middle-aged malaise of both: the empty smiles, the disenchantment and, most of all, the repression.

Mickey (Alec Baldwin) heads the Bartlett clan, a heady real estate developer well on his way to becoming an ardent Reaganite. Wife Brenda (Jill Hennessy) takes on the stay-at-home baby-maker role and is menacingly overprotective of 15-year-old bully magnet Scott (Rory Culkin). Across the way is Baldwin’s co-worker Melissa Bragg (a miscast Cynthia Nixon), a grumpy matriarch whose had enough of looking after Lyme-diseased hubby Charlie (Timothy Hutton) and prickly teen Adrianna (Emma Roberts).

With both marriages in shambles, Baldwin and Nixon enter into an affair so poorly guarded as to warrant more unintentional laughter, which Roberts and Culkin are the first to stumble upon. Culkin’s take-no-shit big brother Jimmy (played nicely by real-life bro Kieran Culkin) returns home to take a swing at dad and the wheels pretty much fall off as soon as he and Baldwin throw down.

Young Rory Culkin is the engine of the film, and his sexual awakening and painful pining after beautiful BFF Roberts centres the film. The two play off each other impressively, and while the script for Lymelife comes off as dated and contrived, it’s clear the Martini brothers have a knack for pulling performances out of young actors. That said, special mention is also warranted for Emma Roberts: there’s no doubt she’ll be headlining in the near future.

LYMELIFE OPENS THIS FRIDAY, MAY 8