Release Date: September 7, 2012

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Directors: Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal

Stars: Dennis Quaid, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons

Our Rating: C+ (At best.)

I recently walked into my resident (and by “resident” I mean most convenient for me) movie theater and decided to watch a new movie by the name of The Words, directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal and produced by Michael Benaroya and Tatiana Kelly. I decided to watch The Words as a change of pace, if you will. Unfortunately, this change of pace led me to Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal’s directorial DEBUT.

The Words is the story about an author named Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) who is at a public reading for his newest book, The Words. In turn, this book is about a down-on-his-luck author named Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) who finds an old manuscript for a fantastic book and is pressured by his irresistible need to be worth something to publish it. Several years after the book’s publishing, he is confronted by the books original author, called “The Old Man” (Jeremy Irons), who reveals to him the story behind the book.

While I must admit that the directors did a very good job with their casting choices and overall Mise-en-Scène, as I said before: this film was their directorial debut. The story itself is hard to follow without knowing basic plot points, and it finishes off with far too many loose ends for my liking. One of which, for example, is that the book The Words by Clay Hammond may or may not be a semi-autobiography. This matter, in and of itself, was extremely confusing and barely addressed. I find that compared with its entirety, the ending of The Words seemed slightly half-arsed.

I personally am not much of a fan of romantic dramas, but The Words was actually kind of enjoyable. That is, if you ignore the over-twisted plot, the slow-to-a-crawl pace, and the male characters’ tendencies to be extremely drunk. I look forward to next week. Just one question: What would you do if evil goes global?