The Words (2012)

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Olivia Wilde, Zoe Saldana, Jeremy Irons, Ben Barnes, Dennis Quaid

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  Hammond’s The Words is a story about Rory Jansen (Cooper), a struggling writer who finds an unpublished manuscript that amazes him and, after his wife, Dora (Saldana), mistakes the manuscript for his own he decides to get it published under his name.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.

What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)

Stars: Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Chace Crawford, Brooklyn Decker, Ben Falcone, Anna Kendrick, Matthew Morrison, Dennis Quaid, Chris Rock, Rodrigo Santoro
Director: Kirk Jones

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: C

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is another one of those movies very, very loosely based on some already established trademarks.  This time the focus is on the book that tells you all about what you’re going to go through when you’re pregnant.  With that in mind, What to Expect tries to present itself as the love child of Bridesmaids and Love Actually, following the lives of five loosely connected couples, each dealing with the trials and tribulations of impending parenthood.  If that sounds a bit lame, it’s because it kind of is.

The problem with What to Expect is that it doesn’t seem to know what kind of comedy it wants to be, or even if it’s entirely committed to being a comedy.  The genre of movie seems to change with each of the core couples, resulting in a lack of cohesion.  While this would be fine if the movie was a series of shorts connected by a similar theme What to Expect isn’t a film like that.  The Cameron Diaz/Matthew Morrison elements appear to be an attempt a spoof of so-called celebrities who appear in ridiculous reality TV shows, with what seems to be a rather heavy handed jab at Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser fame.  Elizabeth Banks/Ben Falcone bit is attempting to recreate Bridesmaids with Banks playing the Kristen Wigg role (complete with the actress who played Wigg’s awkward roommate playing Banks’ awkward assistant).  Dennis Quaid is Falcone’s father, with Brooklyn Decker as his much younger trophy wife, thus filling the role of the father who doesn’t get it and the inappropriate stepmother that we’ve seen far too many times at this point.  The story Jennifer Lopez/Rodrigo Santoro pairing is more your traditional romantic comedy; they’re an infertile couple looking to adopt, although Santoro’s character isn’t entirely sure he’s ready to be a father.  Santoro’s part doesn’t end there, however, as he joins a daddy walking club, featuring Chris Rock.  Thus, his part of the story descends into your typical Chris Rock type movie, wherein Chris Rock makes himself look good by surrounding himself with goofs.  The final pairing is Chace Crawford/Anna Kendrick, a pair of twenty-somethings who get pregnant after a one night stand and must deal with the consequences.  Of all the stories, this is the least comedic, more of a dramatic romance than anything else.

The stories themselves are a bit unevenly handled.  Some of them get a lot of screen time and really give you a sense of who the characters are, while others are a bit sidelined.  While some of these stories deserve to be sidelined – particularly the Quaid/Decker one – some of the front runners aren’t really strong enough to carry the film the way that they do – especially the Diaz/Morrison one.  The thing that works with a film like Love Actually is that while it has a large number of stories going on at once each one is well developed, each character unique.  What’s more is that the stories are all interconnected and support and add to each other.  Part of the fun of the movie is figuring out just how they’re all connected (there are even flow charts).  This is lost in What to Expect.  The characters are very, very loosely connected and thus the stories don’t really support each other in the same way.  The film does learn from other American attempts at a loosely connected film with an ensemble cast in that it has fewer characters and thus fewer plots.  The characters do get more attention, for the most part, but would benefit from more cohesion in the film.  In the end, I wanted less of the Banks/Falcone and Diaz/Morrison stories and more of the Lopez/Santoro and Crawford/Kendrick stories.