REVIEW
ALEX AND EMMA
Starring Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson
Directed by Rob Reiner
Opens Friday, June 20
Check listings
Something strange happened to me after seeing Rob Reiner’s latest offering, Alex and Emma – I began worrying that the past few years of my life had robbed me of my youthful idealism and had left me a pretentiously cynical individual. Yes, this sweet, cuddly romantic comedy initiated in me a "quarter-life" crisis of sorts.
As a closet sucker for some of Hollywood’s most sentimental drivel, I was more than a little worried about reviewing a romantic comedy featuring charmer Luke Wilson opposite the adorably sweet, squinty-eyed Kate Hudson. Throw Rob Reiner into the mix – a director responsible for such classics as Stand By Me, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally – and I knew I was in trouble.
So when I left the theatre unmoved by Reiner’s attempts to pull at my heartstrings, I began to wonder, "Why didn’t I like it?" Why had Kate and Luke failed where Tom and Meg had succeeded for me so many times before? Why hadn’t this fairy tale of love left me with that warm, familiar feeling of optimism?
In Alex and Emma, Alex (Luke Wilson) is a writer who has 30 days to complete a novel and get paid, or face the music for a large gambling debt financed by the Cuban Mafia. To complete the task on time, he hires a stenographer, Emma (Kate Wilson), to type up the novel as he goes. The novel is a love story and Reiner begins to crosscut scenes of the developing relationship between Alex and Emma with those of Adam and Emma, the characters in the novel (also played by Wilson and Hudson). It becomes overly apparent that this is a classic case of life imitating art, and Alex’s novel is an analogy for his own love life.
For me, this is where the problem lies – while it may be a somewhat novel (sorry) approach to take, it makes it impossible to suspend our disbelief enough to enjoy these sentimental tales. Romantic comedies are sensationalized stories of an idealized world (Hollywood), where everyone is always falling in love, but never falling out of love. They’re feel-good movies that offer us hope, but when you start mixing reality in with them… well, it just becomes harder to take them seriously. |
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