AllMovie

Nearly a decade after impressing audiences at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival with their engaging coming-of-age story Goat on Fire & Smiling Fish, filmmakers Derick and Steven Martini return to deliver this period drama following two families whose lives are profoundly affected by complex relationships, real estate woes, and Lyme disease. Set on Long Island in the late '70s, Lymelife opens to find a suburban community swept up in fear after local resident Charlie Bragg (Timothy Hutton) is diagnosed with Lyme disease. Charlie's tightly wound neighbor Brenda Bartlett (Jill Hennessy) is determined not to let her gentle 15-year-old son, Scott (Rory Culkin), suffer a similar fate, and has taken to duct-taping his cuffs to ensure that he remains Lyme disease-free. Meanwhile, as Charlie convalesces, his wife, Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), goes to work for Brenda's philandering husband, Mickey (Alec Baldwin), a respected real estate developer. All the while, Melissa remains clueless to the fact that she was hired more out of lust than as a friendly favor to a neighbor in need. For years, Scott has pined after Charlie and Brenda's daughter, Adrianna (Emma Roberts), and strangely enough, it seems that she's finally starting to return his affections. Tensions are running particularly high in the neighborhood lately, and when Scott's older brother, Jimmy (Kieran Culkin), arrives home on leave from the army, his confrontations with his tempestuous father, Mickey, threaten to trigger repercussions that will affect the lives of everyone involved.