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ALEX AND EMMA
by Peter Sobczynski

June 20, 2003

(Out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Jeremy Leven and Adam Scheinmen & Andrew Scheinmen & Rob Reiner. Directed by Rob Reiner. Starring Luke Wilson, Kate Hudson and Sophie Marceau. 101 minutes. Rated PG-13. A Warner Brothers release.

When Rob Reiner began his directorial career 20 years ago, he was derided by naysayers who were incredulous that Meathead would have the nerve to make his own films. He quickly shut up those doubters with a string of critical and popular successes that made him one of the most reliable American filmmakers around. Most directors strive their entire lives to come up with one great film and with his first six efforts, Reiner came up with two all-time classics ("This is Spinal Tap" and "The Princess Bride"), two near-classics ("The Sure Thing" and "Misery") and two solid, well-made entertainments ("When Harry Met Sally" and "A Few Good Men"). Even the most cynical critics were amazed by this output-it almost seemed as if Reiner must have sold his soul to the Devil in order to come up with such a run.

If that were true, then the Devil must have come to collect and his interest charges must have been especially usurious. If you factor out "The American President" (which is not a favorite of mine-partly because it helped inspire the always-aggravating "The West Wing" but there are plenty of people who like it), his career since then has been filled with the kind of disasters that would kill most careers; "North" (which featured Bruce Willis as the Easter Bunny), "The Ghosts of Mississippi" (an insulting look at a black tragedy-the murder of Medger Evers and the decades-long pursuit for justice in the case-told through the eyes of a dopey white lawyer) and the dreadful "The Story of Us" (in which two of the more charismatic actors around, Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer, were trapped in an utterly false and insulting look at marriage and divorce). Now comes "Alex & Emma", a romantic comedy so gruesomely awful that even the Devil would disavow any connection with it.

The film stars Luke Wilson as Alex, an author who also happens to be a degenerate gambler. As the film opens, he owes $100,000 to some Cubans and if he doesn’t turn in his latest book in 30 days (so that he can get paid by his publisher), they will kill him. Unaccountably, the Cubans decide that the best way to encourage Alex to get to work is to destroy his laptop computer. Since he can’t simply go out and buy or borrow another word processor (because if he does, like a normal person would do, there is no movie), he decides that he will hire a stenographer and dictate the book off the top of his head. And because he can’t simply hire a stenographer by saying that he is an author who needs to dictate a book, he places an ad claiming that his rat-trap apartment is actually a law office.

I’m being facetious, of course. He can’t simply state his actual purpose at first because if he did, then there wouldn’t be the big scene in which the stenographer, Emma (Kate Hudson) appears, assumes that Alex is a liar and a psychopath (both of which are true, admittedly) and flees, only to have a change of heart when she looks at the back cover of his earlier book and realizes that he actually is an author. Of course, if I had been her in that situation, I would have noticed that the hardcover price of the book was $13.95, realized that hardcovers haven’t been that cheap since Reagan was in office and fled the scene.

Because Emma lacks my keen insight into publishing increases, she stays and Alex begins dictating his book, which is depicted on-screen as well. His idea for a compelling story that a publisher would gladly pay 100K for is a period comedy (his word, not mine) about a penniless tutor who falls in love with both the tempestuous Frenchwoman he is working for (played wanly by Sophie Marceau) and the resident au pair (who is also played by Hudson and who, in the most uninspired idea in a film teeming with uninspired ideas, changes nationalities and accents each time we see her). Inevitably, it turns out that Alex’s personal life is fueling his fiction and as he grows more attracted to Emma, he finds his story taking unanticipated turns.

Although it sounds like a destitute man’s "Adaptation", "Alex & Emma" is inspired by a real-life incident in which Dostoyevsky was apparently similarly inspired by his stenographer while writing "The Gambler". If the incident sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because Martin Scorsese used it as a basis for his contribution to "New York Stories" and by comparing the two, we can see how a similar idea work so wonderfully in the hands of one director and so dreadfully in the hands of another. First of all, Scorsese (and writer Richard Price) realized that for such a story to work, the characters had to be passionate, intelligent and complex individuals; if they don’t inspire us in the audience, how can we believe them as they inspire each other? In "Alex & Emma", Reiner and his three co-writers force us to spend 100 minutes with a couple of one-dimensional dopes. Wilson, who is a bright actor when given the right material, comes off as a shlub who acts as though he has never even read a book, let alone supposedly written one. As for Hudson, she is given all sorts of "adorable" personality quirks (she doesn’t like tomato skins and always reads the last page of a book first-a mortal sin even if the sinner looks like Kate Hudson) but, alas, she isn’t given anything resembling a personality. In fact, these two dopes have so little to say or do that in a way, it is a blessing that they have found each other so that they don’t infect the happiness and well-being of others.

Second of all, Scorsese realized that writing is not exactly the most cinematic of activities and immediately changed the lead from an author to a painter. Of course, a smart filmmaker can make the idea of a person sitting at a typewriter intriguing-hell, Reiner himself did it in "Misery"-but here, he seems utterly clueless as to the actual process of putting words on a page. Alex just spouts stuff off the top of his head and it immediately goes onto paper without hesitation and while we are supposed to be startled by how the story evolves under Emma’s influence, the only startling thing is how consistently dreadful the story that he is writing seems to be. At one point, Emma accidentally destroys some of the pages and tries to rewrite them from memory; the joke is supposed to be how awful her revision is but when we hear it, it actually doesn’t sound appreciably worse than the rest of it.

There is exactly one funny line in "Alex & Emma"-which is, in theory, a comedy; Alex’s publisher (played by Reiner himself) is making out a check and asks "Do I make it out to ‘Cuban Mafia’ or ‘The Cuban Mafia’?". (Okay, I didn’t say it was that funny but at that point, I was grasping for anything.) Other than that, the film is a badly written bust-especially depressing since it seems to be celebrating the beauty of the printed word-and a low point in a summer season not exactly teeming with highlights. And yet, because of his early, wonderful films, I still hold a cockeyed hope that Reiner will eventually turn his career around and make good films again. Perhaps he simply needs to re-up with Satan-that is, if the Author of All Lies would want to associate with the Author of "Alex & Emma".

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.