In the mood for cheese?

“The Only Living Boy in New York” is about writers and publishers and much hinges on the use of a deflating word to describe an early literary effort. That word, “serviceable,” applies to the film itself. This is your standard-issue, coming-of-age story and it hits every expected beat: New York City setting, climatic running in the rain, the song with the same name as the movie playing, a wise voiceover delivered by a wise mysterious alcoholic mentor, lots of action taking place in bookstores, etc.

Turns out, I guess I like those standard-issue beats. I like when the narrator reads us the book he is writing in voiceover — the writer is played by Jeff Bridges — and I like scenes in bookstores. Bridges plays an attractively rumpled alcoholic who moves into the Lower East Side apartment building of our young protagonist, Thomas (Callum Turner), who is semi-slumming it on a somewhat less nice part of town in a mild form of protest against his successful parents, played by Cynthia Nixon and Pierce Brosnan.