How bad is this movie? You wouldn't want me to count the ways. Life's too short.
In director Rob Reiner's "romantic comedy," Alex (Luke Wilson) is a writer who'll receive more than $100,000 from his publisher as soon as he finishes his promised novel. He also owes some cliched Cuban loan sharks the same amount. He has a month to pay up or be killed, but he has writer's block. He hires stenographer Emma Dinsmore (Kate Hudson) to help him finish. The novel that Alex has in mind, it turns out, is a truly terrible romance novel which, unfortunately, we're forced to experience in a story-within-a-story structure. As he dictates to the high-strung, opinionated Emma, Alex becomes his fictional creation, Adam, a writer in the 1920s who decides to write a great novel while also tutoring the children of a beautiful Frenchwoman (Sophie Marceau) and torn between love for her and her domestic (played by Hudson).
Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson don't have the write stuff in "Alex & Emma."
(Warner Bros.)
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The inside story is weak, dull and head-poundingly boring, and the outside story is only slightly better, thanks to the lukewarm likability of its two stars.
ALEX & EMMA (PG-13, 96 minutes)-- Contains sexual content and some obscenity. Area theaters.
