Scott Caan, of all people, playing a writer of romantic novels? Who falls hard for a New Yorker magazine critic (Wendy Glenn) with serious medical issues who calls the Los Angeles native “shallow”?
No, this isn’t one of those mock movies on “Entourage.” It’s the setup of “Mercy” (that’s the woman’s name), an earnest but not entirely uninteresting little vanity project written and produced by Caan.
“I’ve never met a woman I want to spend 10 minutes with, let alone 10 days,” Caan’s character tells Mercy before a gap of several months goes by. He’s suicidal and has grown a beard, so it isn’t exactly hard to guess what happens, particularly when his pals try to fix him up with a woman who lost her husband.
Despite risible dialogue, “Mercy” is watchable because of Caan’s physical presence — and a couple of scenes with his real-life father, James Caan, as his cynical dad who pronounces that “love — it does not exist.”