This decidedly uneven romcom about a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter forced to take a teaching job in out-of-the-way Binghamton, NY, is Hugh Grant’s fourth movie for writer-director Marc Lawrence, the most recent being the laugh-free stinker Did You Hear About the Morgans?, which could/should have been a relationship ender. Grant plays Keith Michaels, a chauvinist misanthrope (with a broken heart, natch) who once bagged an Oscar for penning “Paradise Misplaced”, but who is now creepily bedding students with daddy issues. Unsurprisingly, “humourless Jane Austen scholar” (as per the press notes – really) Professor Mary Weldon (Allison Janney, wasted) wants him run off campus. More bafflingly, Marisa Tomei’s sprightly single mom/grad student sees something in him which she doesn’t want to slap – a mystery, frankly. With its top-notch supporting cast (Janney, Tomei, JK Simmons) The Rewrite couldn’t be entirely unlikable, and does boast several early chuckles, but it remains at best disposably flippant – Josh Radnor’s Liberal Arts is Citizen Kane by comparison. Grant knows how to deliver a line and isn’t afraid to play a sleazeball (albeit a redeemable one) but you keep wishing Richard Curtis was on hand to put better – and crucially funnier – words in his mouth.
