Movie Review: Alex & Emma

Alex & Emma (2003) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by Jeremy Leven 

Starring Luke Wilson, Kate Hudson, Sophie Marceau, David Paymer, Rob Reiner

Release Date June 20th, 2003 

Published June 20th, 2003 

Recently I had a conversation with a friend about director Rob Reiner and it reminded me of the number of great films he has made. A Few Good Men, The American President, This Is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally amongst others combine great filmmaking with a pop sensibility that is entertaining and accessible without pandering.  However there have been occasions during Reiner's career when he lost that sense. In films such as North and The Story Of Us, Reiner mistakes quirky and cute for funny. For his latest picture, Alex & Emma, Reiner has the ingredients of When Harry Met Sally but the execution of The Story of Us.

Alex (Luke Wilson) is a New York writer with gambling debts that have Cuban gangsters hanging him out of a window. He has been promising for months that when his new novel was completed he would have their money. Unfortunately, he has hasn't written even a page. The gangsters give him one month to get the money or they will kill him.

Of course the only way Alex can get the money he owes, now doubled with interest for the extra time, he has to finish his novel. He can't type as fast as he thinks, so Alex comes up with the brilliant idea to hire a stenographer to type as he talks and transcribe the novel when it's complete. Enter Emma (Kate Hudson), a quirky, cute stenographer who believes she is going to work in a law office. Her meeting with Alex in his dingy apartment is one of the few bright funny scenes in the film as she mistakes him for a psycho killer.

After Alex explains what he needs from her, she's still not convinced. It's not until she reads the last page of his first novel that she agrees to work for him. That is one her quirks, Emma always reads the last page of a book to decide if the ending is worth reading toward. It's a cute quirk, but whether it's cute because it's cute or cute because it's Kate Hudson is debatable. If only the audience was given the same option because after seeing the end of Alex & Emma, I likely would not have sat through the whole thing. But I digress.

From this point on, we switch back and forth between Alex's novel about an American tutor hired to teach a pair of French kids while falling for their single mom (Sophie Marceau) and Alex and Emma as they begin to fall for each other. Naturally, elements of the real dynamic begin to seep into the novel. Alex creates a new character, a servant who he envisions as Emma without her knowing it. The character is a nice comic invention who begins as a bubbly blonde Swede then morphs into a severe red headed German and then a fiery Latina before finally settling on an American who looks just like Emma. It's a funny device but it plays as a device, a very noticeable one.

Being a romantic comedy puts Alex & Emma at an automatic disadvantage. We in the audience already expect the leads to end up together so the writers and director must come up with logical roadblocks in order to keep the characters apart til the end. The obstacles in Alex and Emma however, just don't work, especially the obvious curveball that comes near the end. It's yet another of those easily solvable situations that must remain unsolved to extend the film to its conclusion. Hudson's character is asked to do things that are illogical and defy what we have come to know of the character.

Reiner's sure-handed direction is there and he is blessed with the lovely Kate Hudson who saves most of her scenes on the sheer force of her talent and charisma. Co-star Luke Wilson however never seems comfortable and seems miscast as the roguish self-assured Alex. His offhanded laid back style never jives with the confident self-assured character he is supposed to portray and thus he came off flat.

What is really lacking in Alex & Emma however, is laughs. Hudson provides the biggest laughs, especially in her numerous incarnations in the novel, I especially loved her German accent. Very sexy. But overall, when you combine the lack of solid laughs and illogical romantic comedy roadblocks, you get an amiable attempt at romance but an unsuccessful attempt at that.