A different way of telling a story

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

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

One of the reviews says there were three versions of the film. I'd like to see Baldwin's original cut of this movie. The last version was cut badly, there are many unnatural breaks in the film. like it was edited for commercial breaks. The breaks where scenes were cut seem apparent.Apparently the 1941 movie suffered a similar fate, with many titles and severe editing.The story runs counter to the traditional American ethic of money equaling happiness. The film was purchased out of bankruptcy for a fraction of production costs, and renamed and hacked for a fast return on investment.

Struggling novelist, unable to get anything published much less an actual audience to read his work, enters into a pact with a comely female Satan: fame and fortune in exchange for his immortal soul. Archibald Macleish's play "Scratch" becomes an updating of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (filmed in 1941, with a panicked farmer as the tempted central figure); producer-director Alec Baldwin portrays the leading character opposite a terrific supporting cast, including Anthony Hopkins as lawyer Daniel Webster and Jennifer Love Hewitt as the Devil. Unfortunately, the movie was edited against Baldwin's wishes after sitting on the shelf for years, debuting on the Starz television network in 2007 after some brief theatrical bookings. It begins well but quickly loses its footing once Baldwin's writer gains the success he so desired, turning the picture into a yuppie treatise on the old money-can't-buy-happiness ploy. The filmmakers are so out-of-touch, they don't even consider the fact that maybe some of the writer's needs ARE fulfilled by his newfound celebrity. Instead, he turns into a sad sack with money in the bank and women at his feet--clearly not something struggling writers in real-life can identify with. Worse, there's never a moment when this man's heart is actually detectable; Baldwin is so callow an actor (not to mention as the director) that all we perceive are his handsome, unmodulated externals. He purses his lips and gazes intently at the camera, hoping to smolder, while viewers lose track of the character's roots. The final courtroom battle is well-played, though so much of the writing is smarmy, and executed without style, that the overall results are distinctly unsatisfactory. *1/2 from ****

The first time I saw Alec Baldwin and Antony Hopkins together was in "The Edge", a magnificent movie about basic things like survival, our true nature and our goal in life. "Shortcut to happiness" is very close to it as a message. This is a story about our true path in life, about genuine things we must do and how different is world now. Different from our true role in life, set by mother Nature, how we have substituted what is wright for something we suspect is rather wrong. Philosophical subject that provokes all of us to think what we have to do with our carrier and our personal life. The play of Alec Baldwin and Sir Antony Hopkins is with no doubt perfect and appealing in every aspect. So is the screenplay, the only concern I have is about the staging, it could be more solid and so I expected. This is not a big issue though and overall the movie is just excellent!

It's very interesting how some old ideas always come back "in new clothing" to movies or literature. This movie is a good example. It's about the "old but nice" cliché of Faust, the man how sells his immortal soul to the devil in exchange of achieving happiness.I like Jennifer Love Hewitt playing devil in this movie. I don't think she's gorgeous or a tremendous actress, but she's cute and did a good job in this movie.This movie mixes references to classic US writers, the "not a penny in the pocket" world of the amateur writers struggling to be noted by a publisher and the the US mania for justice court battles.It's a light movie for relaxing with friends or the girlfriend/boyfriend.