Hugh Grant does not have a high level of job satisfaction. He confirmed as much in a strikingly candid interview with Jonathan Ross in 2009, noting that he was “a very limited actor”. Romantic comedies, he said, were about all he could manage, “but yeah, I’m sick to death of kissing the girl in the last act”. Instead, he finds purpose in his work by locating film-makers with whom he shares a certain sensibility. Richard Curtis was the first, but over the last decade it’s writer-director Marc Lawrence who has done the most to shape Grant’s career.
The pair’s collaborations have never failed to make money, though they have varied in quality from unexpectedly sublime (the cutely cynical Music And Lyrics) to mind-meltingly terrible (the breathlessly bleak Did You Hear About The Morgans?). Their latest effort, The Rewrite, is certainly an improvement on the latter film, even if it’s every bit the exercise in Hollywood navel-gazing that its title would suggest.
Grant plays Keith Michaels, a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter who reluctantly accepts a teaching position at an east coast university. Parallels with Grant’s own career are drawn in broad strokes: in one scene, he even watches his own 1995 Golden Globes acceptance speech for best actor, reattributed to Michaels for his best screenplay Academy Award win. Frustratingly, his character’s bitterness is shared by The Rewrite itself, as it strives perversely to portray Hollywood as a town obsessed with “female empowerment” at the expense of all else.
Nonetheless, there’s a frankness to The Rewrite that plays directly to Grant’s strengths. Case in point: it’s less than 15 minutes into the movie before Michaels is propositioned by one of his teenage students, and true to the spirit of his character, he forgoes any pesky moral considerations and jumps at the chance. He may have to kiss the girl in the last act, but at least he can break a few rules in the first.
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Also out this week
Magic In The Moonlight Woody Allen on autopilot.
The Maze Runner Dystopian political allegory for children.
Dracula Untold The story Bram Stoker would’ve told had talent not got in the way.
