Director: Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal
Genre: Drama, Romance
Rating: D
If Inception had been about
books instead of dreams then this would have been that movie. Actually, no, that’s not entirely
accurate. If Inception had been about books and had been really, really bad then
it would have been The Words. This movie was really disappointing; sure
Bradley Cooper can be a bit hit-or-miss in his movies and not really a dramatic
actor, but I really liked the concept, I really like the idea of frame
narration, and I really like the rest of the cast. I seem to be falling into that form of
disappointment a lot lately; interesting concept, primarily stellar cast, bad
movie.
Much like how Inception is
about a dream within a dream within a dream, The Words is about a story within a story within a story. Clay Hammond (Quaid) is an author who’s just
released his latest book, also titled The
Words, and is at a book reading for it where he meets student and major fan
Danielle (Wilde), who hits on him and presses for more information about the
book. Hammond’s The Words is a story about Rory Jansen (Cooper), a struggling writer
who finds an unpublished manuscript that amazes him and, after his wife, Dora
(Saldana), mistakes the manuscript for his own he decides to get it published
under his name. Then he meets the Old
Man (Irons), who tells Rory the story of the Young Man (Barnes) who wrote and
lost the manuscript.
The big problem with The Words is
the fact that it’s unbelievably slow. The
Hammond element to it is completely unnecessary and adds very little – what it
does add is supposed to bring an element of mystery to the film but really just
convolutes and confuses things. The real
story lies within Rory and the Old Man, not Clay Hammond, and as such the
Hammond parts really take away from the overall story. The one good thing that the Hammond part adds
to the overall movie is the title sequence, which I enjoyed (although, like the
movie in general, I felt it went on a bit too long). Actually, I’m going to take back a bit of my
critique on the Hammond story; I did like what they were trying to do with it,
I just disliked the way they handled it.
In short, I felt the same about that one story line as I did about the
movie overall.
Between the three story lines The
Words does a lot of set up for a payoff that never really comes. I liked the end of the Young Man story line – I
liked the Young Man story line all around – and understood what they were trying
to do with the Hammond, even if I don’t feel that they really achieved it. The end of the Rory line, however, was just
disappointing and rather anticlimactic. There
was no payoff, or at least not enough of one to justify the build up. What can I say… The Words was all foreplay and no orgasm.
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