Movie review: Stuck in love

Movie review: Stuck in love

RATING: 1/5

Writers are lame.

I say this as someone who has been earning a living as a writer of sorts for close to 20 years.

I don't want to see movies about writers. I want writers to write movies about other types of people - the more interesting types.

The biggest problem with Stuck In Love, which is the same problem that plagues most movies about writers, is that it thinks it's smart, but it's goofy.

Writers are not tortured geniuses; they're idiots who can't actually DO anything, and so they write.

The Squid And The Whale is a good example of a movie that presents writers as the dorks that they are.

Stuck In Love isn't fit to smell The Squid And The Whale's shoes.

As but one example of Stuck In Love's idiocy, Kinnear gives his son the big "a writer is the sum of his experiences" pep talk. How can a writer WRITE if he's never really LIVED?

To this I say: huh?

The writer of this flick apparently knows nothing about the process of writing, which requires one to sit on one's butt forever, never really living at all.

The writers I respect tend not to be jet-setting playboys but boring, married dudes.

There's a scene near the end of the film which is equally naive: Kinnear's son receives a phone call from his hero Stephen King telling him that his short story is The Best Thing In The World.

Sigh.

Also, no writer anywhere looks anything like Lily Collins.

jjohnson@sph.com.sg

RATING: 3/5

This movie tries to give writers a glamorous life. Do we really have such "exciting" lives?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. I doubt we can even afford the huge beach house that Kinnear and his writing brood live in!

Stuck In Love's plot is very questionable.

It's hardly an intelligent film, and it's predictable.

But is it worth watching? For me, yes.

There's a very pretty quality to the movie.

It's eye-candy overload. There's the ever graceful Connelly, the cute Collins, the sexy Kristen Bell, who plays Kinnear's sex buddy, and comely starlet Liana Liberato as Wolff's object of affection.

On the male front, Kinnear looks scruffily handsome, Wolff makes for a good-looking nerd and Logan Lerman as Collins' love interest rounds up the very attractive group.

Oh, the dapper Patrick Schwarzenegger also has a bit part as a high school jock.

All of them put up solid performances, particularly the younger actors, who manage to stand out in the presence of the always reliable Kinnear and Connelly.

Wolff is endearing as the budding writer experiencing first love.

Collins and Lerman are way better here than in their respective summer flicks The Mortal Instruments and Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters, bringing depth to their thin roles.

joannes@sph.com.sg


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