A Nice Little Movie with An Overqualified Cast
The movie is called "The Re-Write," and though the cast has notable names, I'm pretty certain it got no theatrical distribution in the US. Likely "straight to DVD, Pay-Per-View, and streaming." Its just too damn inconsequential, too damn NICE.
But the casting was interesting, with the two leads rather what you might call "90's victims":
Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei.
The story: Grant is a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter who nonetheless wrote on Oscar-winning script ("Paradise Misplaced.") Unable to sell a script in LA, he takes a one-semester college screenwriting-teaching job in upstate New York. Reliable supporting actor JK Simmons plays the amiable English professor who becomes Grant's instant faculty friend; reliable supporting actress Allison Janey plays the cold and repressed English professor who becomes Grant's instant faculty enemy.
So THAT storyline gets set up. (With the wonderfully eccentric Chris Elliott on hand as a "professor sidekick" for Grant as well. There's your supporting cast; three good names.)
Meanwhile, the cynical reprobate Grant manages to fill his class almost exclusively with beautiful co-eds(one of whom seduces him)...and a few token guys(one of whom IS a brilliant screenwriter). And one "overaged back-to-schooler" played by Marisa Tomei. She is a single mother working two jobs but who never stops being optimistic about everything.
See where this is all going? I did. The movie was so predictable all the way, and so pleasant all the way, and so absolutely lacking in twists all the way, that I was strongly reminded of harmless 1940's programmers starring Dennis Morgan I sometimes watch on TCM "just for fun." Except without the co-ed affairs.
I liked the movie for what little thing it was, for its absolute lack of violence or killing(given how much of that we talk about here) and for the "pull" of other ideas that the movie generated, things and actors to muse about:
ONE: Hugh Grant. This British guy really bugged me in the beginning, back in the early 90's . He brought with him from Britain a series of "stammering on purpose, eye-fluttering tics that made Anthony Perkins look like Steve McQueen. But over the years -- perhaps thanks to too many American studio movies -- Grant lost most of the tics, aged a bit, got a bit heavier -- and was suddenly CARY Grant in my guilty little pleasure of 2003, Love Actually. Here he is 11 year later(this is a 2014 film) hanging on to his career but certainly still a charmer. I wonder if Hugh Grant can make a comeback? (Interstingly, his washed-up screenwriter seemed like a doppelganger for a washed-up actor named Hugh Grant.)
TWO: Marisa Tomei. Here we have the actress who is my crush of decades, since "My Cousin Vinny" in 1992(acutally since a little seen John Landis/Sly Stallone comedy called "Oscar" in 1991). Tomei's Oscar win for "Vinny" was called a mistake by some snarkers ("Jack Palance read the wrong name") but was proved wrong by the Academy and her perf in Vinny is, IMHO, one of the most DESERVED Oscar wins in history. Tomei did it all: she was funny(VERY), she was sexy, she delivered long, long technical speeches, she was warm and loving...and she convinced us that Joe Pesci was worth loving, too.
As far as I'm concerned, Marisa Tomei should have had a Julia Roberts/Sandra Bullock career, but the vehicles were wrong and she's always been in supporting roles in the main...or getting leads in things like "The Re-Write."
Tomei has aged a bit, but in "The Re-Write" she's all things starry and bright to me. Great looks, great smile, great voice and absolutely top of the line ...line readings. Also she has a dancing scene -- joyously , and sexily, with her daughters -- that took me out of the "nice-ness" of The Re-Write and reminded me how perfectly Tomei danced as a stripper in "The Wrestler" opposite Mickey Rourke. I think that got her another Oscar nom...she was perhaps the most perfectly realistic vision of a working stripper ever put on film. Working mom, caring within but steel-cold and uncaring on the outside; a little bit bi-polar.
But I digress.
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The Re-Write being a 2014 film, JK Simmons made this the same year he won the Oscar for playing a real SOB as that music teacher. And the same year he made those insurance commercials. Goes to show you: great actors are WORKING actors. Honestly, The Re-Write landing JK Simmons and Allison Janey as the main support is a movie with a fine pedigree indeed.
I also liked the capture by "The Re-Write" of wintry wooded Northeast America. The story unfolds in the winter and finishes in a Spring as bright and welcoming as Marisa Tomei's smile.
Sigh