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Sep 6, 201238A well-acted but narratively limp indie that's undermined by a failure to connect emotionally with its audience.
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33Cooper, who looks appealingly wolfish in his expensively tailored suits, plays the whole thing with a dutiful, earnest expression lacquered on his face, his eyes misting on cue at the exact same moments yours will be rolling into the back of your head.
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30Hoariest of all are the exhortations to make distinctions between "fiction" and "life."
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30The movie, written and directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, is desultory when it's not inept, but the set-up is so good that you can't help sticking it out to the (unforgivable) end.
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25The acting, script and direction - not to mention the syrupy score - conspire to make this a perfect storm of a hoot that will find its most appreciative audience among renters who have had a few glasses of wine beforehand.
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25A nitwit story about a nitwit author who has written a nitwit novel about a nitwit author who has published a nitwit novel which, in fact, he has stolen wholecloth from another writer whose personal behavior, as fictionalized in the novel-within-the-novel-within-the-film, can charitably be described as...nitwit.
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25Even the story-within-a-story structure doesn't pay off. This material needed more substance and ideas - and less flash and sumptuous production values.
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25The film folds narratives on top of narratives in a vain attempt to mask the fact that there's nothing to read between its graceless lines.
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16The idiotic melodrama The Words is a maddening contradiction: a film about the publishing industry and a great literary fraud that doesn't have a literary bone in its body or a thought in its pretty, empty little head.