Film review: The Rewrite - Hugh Grant as likeable as ever
This standard fish-out-of-water comedy starts as a largely pedestrian stroll through some well-worn Hollywood themes and genres, but turns into a thoughtful middle-aged romance.
Starring: Hugh Grant, Marisa Tomei
Director: Marc Lawrence
Category: IIA
A film about an Oscar-winning scriptwriter who teaches screenwriting would do well to have a top-notch script itself. Beginning life as a standard fish-out-of-water comedy, writer-director Marc Lawrence's The Rewrite is a largely pedestrian stroll through some well-worn Hollywood themes and genres. But the movie notably improves at the halfway mark, when the jokes are jettisoned for more thoughtful drama and a bit of middle-aged romance.
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Hugh Grant plays Keith, a washed-up screenwriter who leaves Hollywood to teach at an university. The expected dramatic conflicts occur: he clashes with academia in the shape of the stern Professor Mary Weldon (Allison Janney), falls for the hottest student in his class (Bella Heathcote), and helps a youngster get a Hollywood deal. Marisa Tomei, as an older student named Holly, is the love interest, and provides a bit of well-needed sizzle.
Early on, the film is full of corny situations resulting from Keith's failure to recognise that Hollywood and academia have different ways of doing things; cue the gentle humiliation that's been a hallmark of Grant's onscreen persona since Four Weddings and a Funeral. The actor plays the odd man out with his usual amiable charm, but it's difficult to believe that he doesn't know, for example, that it's not a good idea to bed the female students after class.
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The Rewrite ups its game later, when Keith is forced to analyse why he became a writer and why others should learn to write. The subplot about whether we are born with talent or become talented through hard work and tenacity is thought-provoking.