MOVIE REVIEW: ALEX & EMMA (2003)

My wife and I try to take turns picking movies to watch. She prefers anything romantic, funny, or inspiring. While perusing some streaming titles, we came across this film. My wife selected it thinking it was Kate & Leopold, but the description told us otherwise. We watched it anyway, hoping to be pleasantly surprised. What we got was a film that was sort of romantic, a little funny, and not very inspiring.

Luke Wilson stars as Alex Sheldon, a writer who has been given a 30-day ultimatum to pay off his $100,000 debt to some Cuban mobsters. If he can finish his book in that time, his publisher will pay him enough up front to save his neck. But finishing the book means starting the book, so he hires a headstrong stenographer named Emma Dinsmore (played by Kate Hudson). Extracting Alex’s story from his vague ideas proves challenging, but the two also bond over the process and it becomes a collaboration in more than one way.

Director Rob Reiner has helmed several remarkable and beloved movies in his career, but Alex & Emma was part of a rough patch for him. Reiner makes a good effort at creating the world of the story within the story (in which Wilson and Hudson portray characters of the book in progress), so I put the blame more on the script. Much like Alex’s story, the film’s plot is an interesting idea, but it never finds a way to become anything more than that. Both Alex’s dilemma and the story he tries to force into existence are a bit outlandish without capturing enough of the potential humor in each realm.

Wilson is adept as ever playing a character who is in over his head but remarkably nonchalant about making things work. That may track from the humorous slacker standpoint, but he doesn’t make for a very convincing romantic lead. Hudson gets the choice cuts as Wilson’s foil in the real world and a variety of characters within the story world. The script feels a bit safe on both sides of the story world, and it never challenges the actors beyond the level of quirky fun. I get the sense that Reiner enjoyed the story within the story parts more as there is more flair to those shots, but he never gets his actors to stretch beyond their comfort zones.

There is some chemistry between Wilson and Hudson, but it seems to come more from a place of comfort with each other rather than the kind of spark that makes a romance memorable. The end result is a picture with slightly better romance than comedy, which makes the real-world component of the film a bit of a letdown, as it’s clearly supposed to be funnier than it turns out to be. Maybe this film needs a more dynamic actor that Wilson, or maybe it needs a more daring approach to the quirky plot. In the end, Alex & Emma won’t likely win its way into your heart, but it also won’t turn you off either.

FINAL RATING: 2.5 OUT OF 5