A Dumb Movie

In a bid to spend some quality time with my teen-aged daughter today, we rented Alex & Emma, a work of romantic fluff by Rob Reiner, noted on the cover as the director of When Harry Met Sally. I'm not a big fan of When Harry Met Sally, but it's enormously better than Alex & Emma.

The whole premise was laughably impossible. A writer lost $50K at the dog tracks and borrowed money from the Cuban Mafia. When he can't pay it back on time, he promises to double the amount and repay it in a month, when he turns in his manuscript for a new book.

He now has 30 days to write a romance from scratch (he has writer's block). At the end of the 30 days, he'll pick up $125k from his publisher. Later on, we learn it's his second novel.

Somebody tell these people how few novelists can get $125K advance on their second book. How few can turn in a first draft and pick up a check the same day. How few can get the Mafia to wait a month on a double-or-nothing bet (this one I don't know about, not having dealings with the Mafia--Cuban or otherwise--myself).

I nodded off during the second-act climax.

It's the other acronym for DVD--"direct-to-video drek."