Say no more: Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Irons wasted in “The Words.”
Bradley Cooper’s funniest movie since “The Hangover” — unfortunately, unintentionally this time — stars the mysteriously popular actor as a frustrated novelist who plagiarizes an unpublished manuscript that brings him fame, fortune and a little bit of guilt.
“The Words’’ practically licks your face like a puppy in its futile desire to be taken seriously as romantic drama. But the acting, script and direction — not to mention the syrupy score — conspire to make this a perfect storm of a hoot that will find its most appreciative audience among renters who have had a few glasses of wine beforehand.
It’s the film equivalent of the International Imitation Hemingway Competition, an annual contest to choose who can write a “really good page of really bad Hemingway.’’
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Poor Papa gets repeatedly name-checked in “The Words,’’ and Bradley’s purloined novel, which he pretentiously titles “The Window Tears’’ is chock-full of purple, faux Ernest Hemingway. There’s plenty more where that came from in virtually every line of risible dialogue.
Bradley has written his own novel, but an agent tells him he can’t sell this “piece of art’’ because it’s “too interior’’ — a big laugh because Bradley’s character, like all of the others in this film, does not seem to have any detectable inner life.
The actor’s way of portraying frustration or torment is to periodically furrow his perfect brow in a way that suggests a child whose favorite toy has been taken away from him.
Bradley discovers the manuscript in a satchel that his wife (Zoë Saldana) buys for him in a dusty Paris antique shop, and transcribes it into his laptop as an exercise.
Because, we’re told about the manuscript by the narrator, “He needed to know what it felt like — to touch it — if only for a moment!”
“There are parts of you in there that I’ve never seen before!’’ exclaims the wife to Bradley, whose chiseled abs are much in evidence here. Unaware of his writing “exercise,” she begs her very slightly reluctant hubby to show it to his boss at the literary agency where he works in the mailroom.
“You’ve written a remarkable work of fiction!’’ he’s told. And before long, we’re told, “He was the darling of the New York literary world.’’
As anyone who’s seen the trailers knows, the now-old man who actually wrote Bradley’s novel shows up “on a crisp and clear autumn morning’’ in Central Park. He’s played by Jeremy Irons in what amounts to an extended Boris Karloff impression (complete with a cane).
The old man spurns Bradley’s offers of money, content to torture him (and us) by narrating a series of hokey, teary and amber-tinted extended flashbacks about the events that inspired his — that is Bradley’s — novel.
As an expatriate GI working as a journalist (Ben Barnes) in post-World War II Paris (natch), the younger version of the old man falls in love and marries a comely waitress (Nora Arnezeder).
Their glorious romance goes tragically sour when their child dies — and, more important, she misplaces the manuscript their grief had inspired him to write in a two-week frenzy. He never writes again, and turns to growing flowers.
Co-directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal’s gimmicky script unwisely provides a second narrator, played by Dennis Quaid.
He’s the author of “The Words,’’ another novel, which is about Bradley’s character. This one may or may not be based on Quaid’s own experience. This confusing it’s-all-a-story device has the impact of reducing the film’s featherweight examination of moral issues to zero.
Quaid, who is unwisely photographed in many extreme nostril-flaring close-ups, narrates the closing chapters of Bradley’s story to an adoring and hot-to-trot graduate student (Olivia Wilde) who has turned up at a reading.
“Art and life, they’re NOT THE SAME THING,’’ Quaid proclaims between highballs during this anticlimactic ending. Containing not a single moment that might be mistaken for either one, “The Words’’ is, at best, good for a few laughs.
Lou Lumenick is blogging and tweeting reviews from the Toronto International Film Festival; go to twitter.com/loulumenick.