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Hollywood loves to glamorize the lives of writers. In movies, writers are fascinating characters who live and act and feel more powerfully than normal human beings. Sure, they often suffer for their art, but there seems to be something otherworldly and even divine about the way that these Hollywood heroes are inspired to put pen to paper—to string together words that will make people laugh or cry or see things in a whole new way. Since I’m one of these mystical creatures, I suppose I should help to perpetuate this notion of writers as superhuman beings—the way that the literary drama, The Words does. But we’re normal people, just like you—only we make a lot less money.
If you want to see a movie about writers, though, The Words has plenty of them. It’s a movie about a writer who wrote a book about a writer who stole a book from another writer. It may sound complex—and, in a way, it is—but, really, instead of telling one compelling story, it tells three rather unremarkable ones.
The film is built around a book reading by author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid). His new novel, The Words, tells the story of Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), a struggling novelist whose dreams of bestseller lists quickly turn into a pile of rejection letters. During his honeymoon in Paris, Rory purchases an old case—and, hidden in that case, he finds a yellowed, type-written manuscript. Moved by the story, he retypes it and, eventually, submits it as his own work.
When Rory’s novel becomes the bestseller that he always dreamed he’d publish, the literary world takes notice—as does the old man (Jeremy Irons) who actually wrote it.
Written and directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal—two of the guys responsible for 2010’s barely coherent TRON: Legacy—The Words isn’t nearly as smart or profound as it likes to think it is. Mostly, it’s just a perplexing jumble of simple stories.
Of the three storylines, one of them is somewhat intriguing. Rory’s tale of desperation and lies has the potential to be dramatic and/or suspenseful—and Cooper is believable as both starving artist and overnight success, just as he was in Limitless—but the story doesn’t get the development that it deserves. It’s really just the shell of a story, surrounded by other undeveloped little stories—all of which are somehow supposed to come together to make one cleverly captivating drama. Instead, it’s melodramatic and distracted. Clay’s part of the story is almost entirely unnecessary, while the old man’s story of love and loss feels like nothing more than a really long tangent.
Meanwhile, since most of the characters get so little screen time, it’s difficult to care about any of them. Both Clay and the old man are more narrators than anything else—and even Rory ends up relegated to the same old writer clichés. And when it all comes to an end, you’ll be left feeling unsatisfied and indifferent.
Poorly acted and weighed down by melodrama, The Words is the same old story about a troubled writer—times three. If it were a novel, it wouldn’t take long for it to find its way to the bargain bin.
