The first minute of the movie has Jane Ryan rushing on stage to give an important speech, only to realize that she forgot to put on any clothes! Ho ho ho… That’s “New York Minute” right there, equal parts wackiness and titillation. In their first theatrical release since growing hair in funny places, the Olsen twins try to please both their fanbase of little girls and all the grown men who drool at their sight.
The big speech Jane has to give today is to convince the McGill foundation to give her a scholarship to Oxford. She’s Little Miss Perfect, all about good grades and good behavior and since her mom died, she’s been taking care of her dad and her twin sister, Roxy. Jane and Roxy might look exactly alike, but beyond their beautiful eyes, gorgeous hair and hot bodies they couldn’t be more different. Roxy doesn’t care about grades and college, all she wants is to have fun and rock out! Today she’s cutting school to go to a Simple Plan video shoot, but she’ll find herself spending most of her time helping her sister to get around all kinds of obstacles on her way to her scholarship thingie.
“New York Minute” is the Olsen’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with Mary-Kate as the easygoing Ferris to Ashley’s neurotic Cameron Frye. They’ll spend the day getting into goofy situations involving cute boys, wild chases, dumb racial stereotypes, bathroom humor, the ugliest dog in the world, Eugene Levy as a moronic truant officer who considers Roxy to be his great white whale and Andy Richter embarrassing himself as a Chinese bootlegger.
“New York Minute” is like a bad ‘80s comedy, “Week-end at Bernie’s” minus the dead body but with leads much cuter than Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman! One could fuss endlessly about plot inconsistencies (like how the girls stop at Big Shirl’s House of Bling for a musical montage of goofy hairdos and outfits even though they’re running late for Jane’s speech), but there are worse things in life than spending 90 minutes watching two 17 year old babes running around the Big Apple, right?
Dennie Gordon directs the movie like a rock & roll comic book, with bright visuals and more split-screens than in Hulk. This is a big improvement from her bland-looking What a Girl Wants, but the same can’t be said of the cliché-ridden screenplay. “New York Minute” will satisfy young girls and dudes horny for Mary-Kate and Ashley, but anyone looking for wit or originality better look elsewhere.