Disc Reviews

The Rewrite Review

• 3rd Feb 2015

The Rewrite seems to have trouble making up its mind about quite what kind of film it aspires to be. It is a Romcom but with some of the familiar elements missing (like snogging, for one), although that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It has elements of the pupil-mentor genre, but Hugh Grant as the reluctant teacher is as far away from mentor as it gets, especially at the start of the film when he manages to sleep with one of his much-too-young students within hours of arriving in town for his new job.

To clarify: The Rewrite is the story of chauvinist (“I am sick of female empowerment”) screenwriter Keith Michaels whose one big Oscar-winning hit of years ago was followed by a series of flops and a total lack of new commissions that has left him desperately in need of cash. Cue his agent who gets him a gig as writer-in-residence at some out-of-the-way college in upstate New York – about as far removed from his chosen Los Angeles as it gets. Naturally, Keith makes up his mind to try and get through the ordeal by doing as little work as possible – he doesn’t believe that writing can be taught anyway – while potentially sleeping with a couple more students, whom he picks for his class not on the basis of the scripts they have handed in but by their Facebook profiles; attractive women, unattractive men. Things don’t go quite according to plan, of course, when Keith manages to get on the wrong side of Jane Austen authority and ethics-committee chair Mary Weldon (Allison Janney, whose final scene is a delight) at the first staff meeting and thus ends up actually having to put in some work to keep the only job he has. The rest is pretty standard: Keith realises that writing not only can be taught but that he actually isn’t that bad at teaching it. Turns out most of the faculty – albeit a selection of nerds teaching the various classics of English literature – and students are nice people (some of the characters are in fact quite adorable). And the one student in his class who does get in on merit, Holly (Marisa Tomei), a mother of two, may just be “the one”.

The Rewrite works as well or even better than other Grant/Lawrence collaborations. Hugh Grant does his thing the way he always does, and while there is as little novelty here as in any of his previous renditions of the awkward but charming Englishman, his is a reliably solid performance of the type of character that brought him fame. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Marisa Tomei pretty much owns the film: Holly is a delight – much less highly-strung than some of Tomei’s previous characters but no less likeable for that. What is more, Tomei and Grant work well together, although Keith’s attraction to Holly is perhaps a tad more explainable than hers is to him, because Holly as a character is much more wholesome than Keith is. The film’s reflection on itself and the process of screen-writing is a nice touch, although it lacks originality. As far as comedy at Hollywood’s expense goes, we have seen much better. The references to its predecessors and other films within its uneasy combination of genres are quite charming. There are a couple of genuinely nice moments, for example when the film uses Hugh Grant’s acceptance speech for Four Weddings as Keith’s acceptance speech for his moment of award-glory.

Far from being Hugh Grant’s best work but certainly one of the better recent ones, this film about third acts and second chances makes for a thoroughly enjoyable watch, which is just as well because the DVD doesn’t add many extras to speak of: one interview with Hugh Grant covers many of the standard questions and is revelatory only is as far as it brings home, once again, how much Grant has really been playing himself for most of his career.

Anne Korn

The Rewrite becomes available on digital platforms from 2 February, 2015 and on Blu-ray and DVD from 9 February, 2015.