Celeste in the City
Celeste in the City
| 07 March 2004 (USA)
Celeste in the City Trailers

Small town girl Celeste Blodgett moves from Bangor, Maine to Manhattan when she gets a job with the New York Examiner, but hears there it's only fact checking, with little prospects for real journalism. Her welcoming young flat neighbor Kyle Halley in an interior designer, who helps her to give her apartment a make-over. At a party she learns her cousin is gay and goes by the new name Dana Harrison; he promises to teach her the city way with a fashionable image transformation, which succeeds with the help of various gay friends. Now she's ready for social life, hoping to impress her boss, reputedly womanizing magazine section editor Mitch Tanzer. He accepts to read her work, but says he can't use it because it's unethical given their personal relationship- then she finds reality is different.

Reviews
mark-singh

I don't know if I can think of a worse movie - from, literally, every angle (writing, plot, acting, music, cinematography). Waste of 120 minutes.

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SnoopyStyle

Simple small town girl Celeste Blodgett (Majandra Delfino) moves from Banger, Maine to New York City. She's a recent college graduate with a job at the New York Examiner. Her only local contact is gay cousin Harrison Blodgett (Nicholas Brendon) who uses new name Dana. She believes her interior designer neighbor Kyle Halley (Ethan Embry) is gay due to her hometown friend's opinions about all interior designers being gay. Her entry level fact checker job sucks. Her hero is reporter Lauren Rawley-Simms who has an on-and-off relationship with magazine editor Mitch Tanzer. Dana and his glam squad give her a makeover while Kyle gives her apartment a different makeover.This is cheap. It's doing the Toronto for New York thing. It's fake 90's New York. The story is formulaic. The title suggests a take on Sex in the City. Majandra does the ugly duckling thing with glasses and transitions into the swan easily. There are no surprises. The humor isn't that funny. Debbie Gibson does have a small role as one of Dana's friends.

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okimir

Anytime I see a movie about a small town girl moving to New York, I have got to check it out. I just finished watching Celeste in the City and was disturbed by irritating stereotypes about the gay community AND women. First of all, why is it assumed that the "gay" friend knows ALL of the fashion/trends and "snap to it, girl" dialogs? The stereotype is disgusting and needs to stop! Also, the only way she can get ahead in NYC is to get a makeover?! I definitely beg to differ! I mean, what does that say about women that we are immediately about something as soon as we show some cleavage and have a short skirt! Ridiculous. I could see what the movie was trying to do, by trying to make it "cutsey" with a small town girl fall in love and make in the big city, but we really need to cool it with the stereotypes and assumptions that are hurting diversity -be it the gay community, race/ethnicity and women!

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AlphabetCity

A huge lesson that Celeste allegedly learns in this story is that it's wrong to assume you know a person simply based on the stereotypes to which they seem to fit. For example, she mistakenly assumes a male interior decorator friend of hers is gay, thus hurting his feelings tremendously when he tells her he has feelings for her.Yet this TV movie itself is so peppered with irritating stereotypes that the filmmakers seem immensely hypocritical. Celeste has a number of male buddies in the hair/clothes/appearance industry, all of whom are bumbling, effeminate, militant fashionistas. Her "cute" boss boyfriend, while he seems essentially pleasant and charming for the first 90% of the film, suddenly turns very "boss-like" at the end and turns out to have been cheating on Celeste and using her writing as a way to get into her pants.Overall this film is incredibly ridiculous. I wouldn't waste your time.

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