The Words: Clichés about being and wanting to be a writer. Unsuccessful would-be writer publishes as his own a manuscript that he found. Original author, now an old man (Jeremy Irons, dreadful American accent attempt, but the wonderful voice and speech impediment is there) tracks him down to reproach him. All extremely superficial about what it is to write and how and why one writes. Movie is just right for the mediocre non-talents that write books and make movies today. No, writers don’t re-type the manuscripts of others to feel what it’s like to write well. No, it’s not all about figuring out what’s fiction and what’s biography. No, real talent (or art) is not about being able to write a tear-jerker. Not the slightest sign in any of this that “writers” have minds (or ought to). The plot within a plot of having yet another writer tell the poacher’s tale is pretty pointless, as is the aspiring, admiring grad student (a standard Woody-Allen prop) who alternately drools over and dominates this supernumerary writer (weak shades of “Misery” here), played by Dennis Quaid, a mediocre actor who can only play superficial, learing lechers — but is, ironically, well cast for personifying this whole reduction of the art of writing (and movie-making) to whatever sells today.
None of these are to blame.