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"AN ENJOYABLE ROMANTIC COMEDY

that makes the most of its appealing young cast."

--John Hartl, Seattle Times

"EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENT!"

--Colby Chester, King TV NBC

It's easy to spot Ian Forrester, the hero of Timothy Hines' "Sunrise on Alphabet City," as an out-of-towner.

A Seattle filmmaker who lands in a friend's New York apartment, he's polite and trusting, and he wants to know why Manhanttan has no air-quality warnings.

Most of all, he's disturbed that a film distributor who has picked up the rights to his serious historical drama, "The Black Death," wants to recut it and turn it into "Medieval Blood Feast of the Sex Maidens."

"Oy vey, I'm working with Andy Hardy," announces a fellow filmmaker.

Naturally, Ian ends up as a victim on several occasions, getting mugged, losing his clothes in a swimming-pool locker, and wondering if he dares emerge from his friend's lair to battle the jungle again. He learns to cope with the Big Apple by shouting a lot.

In his worst moments, Ian sees New York as monumentally indifferent: "It's as if its millions of people existed simply to ignore my pains."

Still, his innocence seems to protect him from the city's truly dark side, and Tom Sunderland is engaging enough in the role to suggest that Ian's life is essentially charmed - especially when he falls for a neighbor, drily played by Alyce LaTourelle, who isn't as tough-skinned as she appears. There's an easy chemistry between these two that makes you want to see them end up together.

This feature, in which Seattle is made to look like Manhattan (some exteriors were shot in New York), is partly based on Hines' salad day in the Big Apple, where he once peddled an unreleased feature film, "The Edison Device."

It's an enjoyable romantic comedy that makes the most of its appealing young cast, which also includes Bristol Pomeroy as Ian's musician friend, Patrick Gant as Ian's imagined romantic rival, Lizanne Falsetto as a model in pursuit of Ian, and Alex Balderrama as Ian's recut-happy distributor.

Hines has a sense of humor about New York as Alien Territory that sustains the script, gives it a special lilt and manages to freshen even the hoariest jokes about muggings, street toughs and cockroach-infested apartments.

--Excerpted from the Seattle Times by John Hartl.

SUNRISE ON ALPHABET CITY

A FILM BY TIMOTHY HINES

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