recommended

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Slow start. Then very entertaining and cute.What I would have changed: After the boat left, he realized the Flamingo Dancers would come for him, so he got on a train out of town. He realized he loved Anne, and because the seasons changed, he knew Anne and the Shaw family would return to St. Charles for the season. He gets on anther train to St. Charles and runs into The Flamingo Dancers. The Flamingo Dancers wanted their money. They taught him the meaning of "Paying through the nose." Anne, seeing him in town, all bruised up and still caring about him, tries to help him. Then he would learn that Anne has money. She only took the job because she was on summer break from college and decided to stay to spite her rich parents. When she found out about her love needing the money, she seeks out her family whom she had become estranged. They had only sent her to school to find a husband. Since she found love, they help. He asks her about how she could forgive him for the french chick. She explains that after spending a year working for them, she saw how miserable Shaw made the family and how important it is to marry for love, and not money, she remembered him. When she learned that he faced The Flamingo Dancers for a glimmer of a chance to win her love back, she decided she could begin to forgive him. Then he can keep those last lines in his book.PS, how is there a train to an island?

Off-beat tale fails when a writer and his stenographer live out the characters in his novel that he is desperately trying to write and complete in 30 days-so that mobsters will not kill him for owing money. He is depending on the money from the book to keep him alive.This premise would have made for an ideal comedy. Instead, the picture goes nowhere with the two people living out the book he is writing. Kate Hudson as the stenographer is constantly interjecting. She has the far more difficult part as he is constantly changing the women in the household where he is tutoring in the summer of 1924.The film becomes such a mess that even the mobsters play out in the book. A good novel should have good plot development; however, there is little plot development here as our 2 people find eventual love while literally torturing us with scenes from the book.Sophie Marceau plays the wealthy woman in the book who literally comes back to life as it becomes serious for our writer (Luke Wilson) and Ms. Dinsmore. (Hudson) David Paymer and Cloris Leachman briefly appear. They have very little to do and should be grateful for that.

Hi, None of the «professional» film critics, as far as I've read or known, has bothered to mention that «Alex & Emma», quite before being a kind of remake of «Paris when it sizzles» (1964) -- starring William Holden & Audrey Hepburn --, it is first of all an «adaptation» -- not to say a remake -- of a great film French movie, «La Fête à Henriette» (1952), by Julien Duvivier, starring Dany Robin & Michel Auclair (not «Eauclaire, as many mistakingly called him !).PS: Perhaps a trivial remark, when who has noticed how many stars' billing rank or order may change within a few years -- in the «stock-exchange» up and downs of crowds favourites of the cinema ? This is a sort of «extreme» example -- time-wise -- since 10 years went by between «Sabrina» (1954) -- in which Miss Hepburn was billed BEFORE Mr. Holden, and «Paris when it sizzles» when this billing order WAS REVERSED !What a shame that Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart didn't ever appear together in a movie ! This was due to the fact that both great stars wanted to have first billing in William Wyler's «The Desperate Hours» (1955)... and neither would give in ! Who said that «Vanity or vanities, all's but vanity» ?

I decided to gouge my eyes out rather than subject myself to viewing another second of this tortuous mess.If you wanted proof of aliens and the ability to inhabit the human body (AKA Invasion of the Body Snatchers), than this is it. It's hard to believe that Rob Reiner, Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson could have been collectively stupid enough to think THIS was a movie worth making... I have to believe they were being controlled from outer space by beings without the benefit of sight.My fiancée even has decided to change the name of her son, Alex, as a result of the embarrassment she felt watching the first 20 minutes of this disaster. That's a piece of my life that I will mourn the loss of for years.RUN! SAVE YOURSELVES! DON'T WATCH THIS "MOVIE" (and I use that term loosely...)!