Stuck In Love

Movies about writers can work – Misery, Shakespeare In Love, Sideways, Barton Fink, Adaptation, Sunset Boulevard – but largely they can be pretentious affairs about the scourge of being a writer, which only writers care about. Stuck In Love distracts us with its multiple love stories but at the end of the day it's a pretentious affair about the scourge of being a writer.

Greg Kinnear is an award-winning novelist who wiles away his days at his beach house waiting for jogger Kristen Bell to happen by so they can jump into bed. That routine is interrupted when promiscuous 19-year-old daughter Lily Collins arrives home for Thanksgiving with news that her book has been published. This miffs dad no end because it's not the book they worked on together, and irks stoner kid brother Nat Wolff (and also budding writer) simply because of sibling rivalry. The three are unlucky in love: Kinnear can't let go of ex-wife Jennifer Connelly, Wolff falls for hot senior Liana Liberato, and Collins does her best not to fall for bass player Logan Lerman, also a writer.

A lot of writers there and not a lot for them to do but to mope and have sex. It's the kind of movie where characters sit down, close their eyes and revel in a song's symbolic importance without irony, which is just yuck and boring (the song is by Elliot Smith by the way, one of many top tunes to make its way on to an admittedly great soundtrack).

Kinnear's general likeability steers him past some shady moments, like his determination that his kids be writers just like him, which is supposed to be an endearing quality but it comes across as bullying. Even though Wolff fancies a bitchy teen who dates the school asshole hunk (why are we always asked to like characters who like unlikeable characters?), he too is blessed with the Kinnear Factor. The same can't be said for Lily Collins (daughter of Phil), however. Collins's self-righteousness is supposed to come across as spunky and the idea is that audience should love her tell-it-like-it-is attitude but her answer-for-everything comebacks grates very quickly.

It's got a great opening line and some pleasant performances but there's nothing here to take home once the end credits roll.