All right, so this opened a hell of a lot longer than this weekend, but sometimes the timing just doesn’t work out (there’s been a big review every week for the last few) and it’s best to hold a lesser-seen (i.e. forgotten) movie back a while.
Anyway, The Words is about a struggling writer (Bradley Cooper) who can’t get anything published but finds a lost manuscript in a briefcase and accidentally passes it off as his own. He becomes an overnight sensation but trouble comes when the actual author (Jeremy Irons) introduces himself to Cooper. But there’s also a bizarre and confusing second story about Dennis Quaid (the writer of Bradley Cooper’s story) reading his book and picking up a fan (Olivia Wilde).
What Works: A movie with a lead character that’s struggling to get a book published and is married to Zoe Saldana? I think it’s safe to say I’m this movie’s target demographic. I found myself rooting for this movie, and wanting to like it more than I really did.
What Doesn’t: For a movie that’s supposed to be a simple morality tale, it’s overly tricked up and confusing. The story within a story within a story left most audience members baffled. [No two people I’ve spoken to agree on exactly what Dennis Quaid’s whole subplot was…was he a future version of Cooper’s character or just a guy telling a story?] Keep in mind that the movie also devotes a lengthy section to the story in Cooper’s book…which is based on Irons’ character’s real life, so the movie is telling three stories at one time…and this isn’t an ambitious work, just a PG-rated parable from CBS Films (the Hallmark channel of movies). And the ending was overly abrupt and unsatisfying, leaving everyone bewildered and not in a good way.
What I Would Have Done Differently: The entire Quaid angle really robs Cooper’s character of a proper ending and also takes the punch out of his entire arc. If he’s just a fictional character (and I understand that some think he’s a younger Quaid) then there’s no real stakes involved for the entire movie, especially since we never learn enough about Quaid’s storyteller to feel that he’s really risking anything. So, long story short, I would have dropped the framing device and Quaid’s character…sorry Dennis, but you don’t need this movie anyway. Oh, and would it have killed them to beef up Zoe’s screen time? She’s barely in this thing.