SHUT-IN MOVIE #11 - RE-WRITE (2014)

This 2014 romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei was written and directed by Marc Lawrence and Grant himself described the film as "about a broken man who mends himself." Well, dear reader he had me at 'broken', I couldn't wait to catch up with Hugh Grant and Marc Lawrence's take on the Six Million Dollar Man. I just knew this was going to be awesome! Maybe Marisa Tomei would be the new Jamie Sommers! Now I'll be the first to admit that Hugh's foppish, quaint and dry British wit wouldn't have been my first choice to play the role of American astronaut, test pilot and spy Steve Austin, but you know I was willing to give it a go. See you all in 106 minutes. Well, that was unexpected. This film took some rather major liberties with my beloved Six Million Dollar Man. For a start, rather than have Steve Austin suffer a spectacular crash that sees him transformed into the world's first bionic man we have Hugh Grant's Keith Michaels suffer the horrors of having his electricity switched off and his latest script rejected by Hollywood. And whereas Steve Austin went through months of painful physiotherapy, Keith Michaels is forced to accept a teaching post at a Mid-west University teaching screenwriting to a room for of beautiful young women he'd like to sleep with. Luckily Marisa Tomei is on hand as the wise beautiful older woman to help him rekindle his passion of writing and re-connect with his son. What follows is a film so generic you actually find yourself thinking you've seen it before even though you haven't, and whose dialogue and plot points you can easily guess with a 80% success rate. This is a film that slavishly follows the Syd Field's classic three act story structure, including the obligatory 10 minute hook, the midway peak and subsequent third act reversal of fortune – that our hero, actually self references it during the film for the benefit of the audience. The plot is so generic, you could have written it by plucking magnetic fridge words out of a bag and re-arranging them. Down on his luck, burned out, divorced dad and Hollywood writer, who's not had a hit film in 15 years, finds redemption and love teaching screenwriting in a midwest University. It's clear that writer/directer Marc Lawrence utterly loves his lead character and fully believes in the emotional arc he traverses. Although the truth is that this film has all the emotional depth of a saucer of spilt tea. The music too is bland to the point of nausea. I think I'm going to stick to old films from now on. You can't go wrong with those! Tomorrow I'm going to rewatch Sex Lives of the Potato Men! C– could do better. 4/10