Alex and Emma
directed by Rob Reiner
written by Jeremy Levin and Adam Scheinman & Andrew Scheinman & Rob Reiner
starring Luke Wilson, Kate Hudson, Sophie Marceau, Rob Reiner, and David Paymer

       In Rob Reiner's new romantic comedy, novelist Alex Sheldon (Luke Wilson) creates characters and then follows them blindly through the plot of his book, never sure where the story will end up.   His approach to writing is an absolute antithesis to the way the film, Alex and Emma, seems to have been laid out.
       In what could be the most concept-driven opening in a film, Alex, suffering from writer's block, is hung outside of a window by two Cuban loan sharks who demand to be repaid a large sum in 30 days or they will kill him.  Oh, and before they leave, they torch his laptop.  Since he has difficulty writing in long hand on legal pads, he hires Emma Dinsmore (Hudson), an uptight stenographer who he convinces to work long days in a dingy apartment with only a promise to pay upon completion of work.
       While Alex dictates his prose, the novel unfolds cinematically for the audience with occasional interruptions of criticism from Emma.   The novel tells of love-triangles involving an English tutor named Adam Shipley (also Wilson), his aristocratic love interest/employer Polina (Marceau), her wealthy suitor John Shaw (Paymer) and her servant (also Hudson in a calling card to re-host "Saturday Night Live") who is successively represented as a Swede named Ylva, a German called Elsa, and the Spanish Eldora before finally characterized as an American named Anna.
        Both the movie and the novel within unfold as predictably as can be expected from the most casual of fiction viewers or readers.  There is evidence that, at one time, the picture ended with a twist before falling into the hands of unsatisfied executives and test screeners.  It doesn't even matter what the conclusion is, though, because the characters, though played with a charmed effort, are still too contrived, their scenes together always a means to an end.
       After watching Alex and Emma, it is hard to believe that Rob Reiner made two of the most adored romantic comedies of the 1980s, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally.  In the last ten years, he has gone from being a highly revered film maker to turning out product on a par with the most amateur of Hollywood releases.  I can only hope that for his own career, he stops acting blindly and plots out a more successful turn of events.

Rob Reiner sadly ponders his film career