"Two Bedroom Movie For Sale. Needs Renovation"

If the HGTV cable network ever decides to expand its programming past episodes of House Hunters, this movie might likely be an original production.  Hopefully, the network will think through the process a little bit more than the filmmakers involved here. Like a strong foundation for a house, you have to start with a good script.

And that's where "5 Flights Up" should have started.   With a script.   And an idea.   And maybe a different director.  Because, as a movie, this claptrap is a complete tear-down.

I saw "5 Flights Up" because it looked like a good evening out.   Desperately trying to find a current film that wasn't based on a Marvel comic, I stumbled across this.   Heck, you think Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman as stars.  How bad can that be?

Ummmmm.....

Filmed completely in New York, this is a movie that had a great logline and then stalls like the IND subway in the middle of rush hour.  Keaton and Freeman play a longtime married couple (yes, folks, and that is treated as color blind as it should be) who have lived in the same Brooklyn apartment for forty years.   Their entire married life has been in those five or six rooms, but there's no elevator in the building and, well, they are getting old.   Plus their beloved pooch has spinal issues and that alone prompts them to consider selling this unit for one in a building with an elevator.  I guess you can figure that out from the super-clever film title.

In steps Diane's obnoxious realtor of a niece, played even more obnoxiously by the usually reliable Cynthia Nixon.  She promises a big return after an open house for prospective buyers.   But, then, the oldsters realize they must flip themselves into another apartment and they go off looking themselves.  This all plays out like a HGTV episode of Flip or Flop with emphasis on the latter.   To make matters worse, New York City is under a possible terrorist attack.  Nothing louses up a weekend of apartment hunting than a bomb planted on the Williamsburg Bridge.

If this all sounds terribly clinical, it is.   Despite the valiant efforts of Keaton and Freeman, this movie meanders around for about ninety minutes and eventually goes no place.  The only real drama and tension comes from worrying about whether their dog will survive surgery.   More inexplicably, this New York-filmed story has no real feel for the city or its inhabitants.   That's likely due to director Richard Loncraine, a lifetime Brit who probably has only been in NY long enough to switch planes at JFK.

It is fun to see Diane Keaton back walking the streets of Manhattan like she did in "Annie Hall,"...gasp...almost forty years ago!  But, in a cinematic device that is now annoyingly cliche, Morgan Freeman does some voiceover narration in a manner that sorely needs a couple of penguins.  Just another misfire in a film that's full of hundreds of them.  

There is no real compelling story to this soon-to-be-condemned shack.  I knew the ending when I was still on line for my lemonade at the concession stand.  And, frankly, the only true surprise was seeing that my friend's brother-in-law popped up several times as a journalist reporting on the terrorist subplot.

If you really, really must see "5 Flights Up," I'd suggest you not buy, but rent.

LEN'S RATING:  One star.

Dinner last night:  Chicken fried steak and vegetables.