Waste of time

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The start is very funny and insightful, with interesting portrays and comments on the modern world and Hollywood/American film/TV production. The conflict of the main character, who tells things "as they are" (at least as he sees it) and not "as people like to see them", and later has to patch up the problems that this creates for him and his career is also interesting and well portrayed.Unfortunately, it loses steam and ends up more-or-less like a "regular" romantic comedy, but even then it's not a bad romantic comedy.I'm not a fan of Hugh Grant, but, this is a very good fit for his acting skills. OTOH, I like Marisa Tomei's acting, yet this is not a good fit for her - she excels playing quirky women, which is not what this character is about. Other actors do a decent job. Directing is also decent.The main impression is that this could have been much better, but, it didn't follow through on its initial premise, for whatever reason. Still, it's well worth the watch and much better than most modern movies.

Hugh Grant plays Keith Michaels, a raffish LA screenwriter who won an Oscar for his screenplay some years ago but his career has struggled since. Whatever he writes is not what the Hollywood producers are looking for, they want to see movies with a kick ass action girl.Estranged from his family, with rejected screenplays and short of cash his agent gets him a job teaching screen writing at a small university just off New York.As soon as he arrives he has a sexual relationship with one of his class student Karen (Bella Heathcote.) At a party he offends stuck up Professor Mary Weldon (Allison Janney) by insulting Jane Austen. He also has no interest in teaching his class or reading their fledgling scripts.However he soon finds inspired to teach by the work his class has produced and especially by one of his nerdy male student who produces a promising screenplay. He also falls for a mature student Holly (Marisa Tomei.) Keith who is arrogant even aloof at first decides it is important that he sticks with his class although Professor Weldon wants to see the back of him.There is nothing much original about the film, it has an easy charm, an amiable time waster and a good cast rounded off by JK Simmons as the department head.

Written and directed by Marc Lawrence, "The Rewrite" stars Hugh Grant as a washed-up screenwriter who embarks upon a teaching career at a state university. Here he finds love, happiness and learns various life lessons.It's hard to write a tale about screenwriters without seeming smug and/or pretentious. And if you do, your story still oft comes across as a giant writer's fantasy anyway. Lawrence solves none of these problems in "The Rewrite"; this is ultimately a phony film which, though it at times works well as a paean to teachers, bristles with tired "insights" into the world of Hollywood and Hollywood writing. For this material done better see "In a Lonely Place", "State and Main" and to a lesser extent 2014's "Liberal Arts". Marisa Tomei co-stars.6.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

We know Marc Lawrence right...the deft hand in people relationships,the comic turn inside the serious, opening out a personality in a painless way...So...why did this one tank...it was/is warm, it was personal, I even liked the music...is Clyde Lawrence his brother... We've lost Nora Ephron now so we need to encourage the people people amongst us who happen to make films..good ones... It takes a lively interest in people to depict them sensitively, there are a number of cliché accompaniments in this film, but at worse they are endearing. The Grant character, no matter how he changes is becomes in itself a cliché, but i don't mind his conversational two step, i like his dry humour, and this film gives him the chance to evolve from the sardonic place that he is always in...in a manner that is accompanied in tone by the other cast members. They get it, they get it all...So we the audience get it, join in, walk out of the theatre feeling enriched by having shared something...What else is there.