Russell Crowe is a Pulitzer prize-winning novelist who… no, stop there, I don’t buy it. Just like I don’t buy Crowe’s am-dram post-traumatic stress seizures (something for the Oscar judges, sir?), his brow-furrowing typing, his cutesy-goofy parenting (“you’re my potato chip”) or, indeed, any other part of this ludicrously overegged symphony of phoniness from Gabriele Muccino, director of the equally fatuous Seven Pounds.
“It’s about life, about death, loss, about love and fear to lose the person you love,” burbles Muccino of Brad Desch’s unaccountably Black List-approved script, which splits its time between dad-slash-author Jake (Crowe) raising young daughter Katie, and grown-up Katie (Amanda Seyfried) wrestling with lovelorn daddy issues.
Swaths of mawkish twaddle are interspersed with ripe platitudes (“Men can survive without love; but not us women…”), which lead to the conclusion that women who have multiple partners must be damaged or deranged. “I don’t do a movie unless I’m physically affected by the script,” says Crowe. Does wanting to throw up count?
