I will try this reviewing thing again and here comes The Words

Having watched another movie whilst fairly distracted by pointless mobile games, I feel I am qualified to publish yet another instalment in my very popular Distracted Movie-Film Reviews series.

On this occasion, I flung myself (figuratively and literally) at The Words, a film about a writer (two writers? three writers? who knows) because I'm, y'know, cultured and shit.


Synopsis
The Words starts off giving us what we professional film critics call a "frame", that is, someone reading the story we are about to watch and thus narrating the movie. This someone is Dennis Quaid (although since I was sufficiently distracted from actually watching the thing, at some point I wondered whether it was Morgan Freeman telling the story. This might be because Dennis Quaid was doing a decent Morgan Freeman impression, or possibly because of an ingrained assumption I never knew I had that any narration in film must naturally be undertaken by Morgan Freeman).

Benedict Cumberbatch's deranged uncle Dennis

Dennis Quaid (seriously, the first thing I associate him with is his role in the movie Innerspace, where he punches/slaps himself in the face to get sober, which is quite far removed from a serious accomplished writer-person, so maybe that's why I couldn't believe it was him telling the story?) reads from his obviously successful book The Words (strike 1, never put the movie/song title in the movie/song!) which is (get this:) about a writer.

This writer - Bradley Cooper (contemporary dreamboat acting person with hair), while happy in his private life (played by Zoe Saldana), is struggling to get anything published and eventually has to resort to getting a day job (gasp!) at a publisher's (which is obviously below him) to fund his lifestyle.

They keep doing it, so they must be happy!

Then he - by accident - finds a manuscript for a novel which is apparently so mindblowingly emotional it makes everyone who comes into contact with it break out in a case of the great big wet sobs and after some hesitation (but not much though, come on), publishes it as his own and becomes mega-successful (and presumably mega-rich, and presumably also more mega-sexually potent).
The big question is of course: Is he ever confronted with the truth about his stealing ways (to which the answer is yes) and if so, what happens next (well you'll have to watch the feckin' film I guess)?


Verdict
I have to note at this point that whenever I choose a movie (which is, by the way, a hard thing for me to accomplish so you may start applauding me now), I mostly go by the actors involved, to ensure that, even if it turns out to be crap, I at least spend those precious 90 minutes with a familiar (read: smokin' hot) face on my TV screen.
Therefore my main reason for choosing this particular film was Bradley Cooper (who on my personal dreamboat scale scores anywhere between 5/10 and 8/10 depending on form on the day).
However, for anyone considering watching (or not watching) this film, please be informed that it brings with it some rather nice unexpected dreamboat madness™ in the form of Ben Barnes, who plays the main character in the stolen book and who is so impossibly and ridiculously handsome that he seems to get roles only in films that are either fantasy-laden, such as Stardust and Narnia, and therefore justify above-average perfectness, or the film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which for bloody hell's sake is all about someone who is almost supernaturally handsome.

Completely and utterly ridiculous.

Therefore, strike 2: If you have bloody Ben Barnes in your movie, put Ben Barnes on the bloody promotional pictures. Other than that: nice surprise, thank you <3

On a related note, there is an old man in the film played by Jeremy Irons with a horrendous accent that sounds exactly like, well, a British person badly putting on an American accent. I forget whether he actually mentions in the movie that his character "spent some time growing up in London" (or was I imagining that?), but even if that is the case, in no possible universe would some time in London and some time in Paris result in such a monstrosity of a confused accent. Geez, get it together, Jeremy.

Accent peeves aside (mind you, they are no trifling matter to me!) - in summary, this film about a successful book about a successful stolen book is not a bad movie. The ending is interesting as it directly discusses the meaning of the book and thereby also the film (wow so meta) but then doesn't give you a definitive answer, so presumably it's supposed to make you go away and think and have discussions with your intellectual friends (you know, like Inception) about what it all meeeaaans, but in my case, it just made me go "oh" and then turn my mind to something completely different. 


In many ways, I hope this review will have the same effect on you.

x

Picture credits/links
http://www.filmofilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Words_i3.jpg
http://ilarge.listal.com/image/1574175/968full-ben-barnes.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/63/1b/1a/631b1a8bfc42631a2ae0f5e225590185.jpg