The Words (2012)

I know it’s not my typical review posting day but I have a little goal to fill and that is to get to 60 reviews and this being the 60th I thought why not do a Sunday one to finish off the last week of 2012. And what better way to do so that to admit that I kind of liked The Words but not really, to be honest, I didn’t expect to have any positive feelings at all but that happened so, I liked it. I also didn’t know that Jeremy Irons was in it (there’s a consequence of my non-interest towards Cooper and his movies) and if I’d known that, this review would be already written months ago!

The interest towards The Words actually became evident when me and my friend wanted to watch a movie together, she is a fan of Cooper and I thought why not indulge myself with yet another writing-a-book-movie. I tend to feel connected to those characters who are struggling to be the kind of authors they themselves are a fan of. Same goes for Bradley Cooper’s character Rory Jansen who is actually a character in a book. Or something like that. The reason why I am a bit confused is because the movie left that question kind of unanswered but here’s what I did understand.

The Words starts with Dennis Quaid’s character reading his own book about Cooper’s character who finds a book written by Jeremy Iron’s character and publishes it as his own. We end up finding out that the book is an actual real life story with flash backs and for me, those were the moments I fell in love with Ben Barnes all over again. There’s actually no reason to stop loving him but I haven’t seen him for a while and his role as a young author brought back all kinds of emotions. Plus, seeing Jeremy Irons and hearing his voice, which is probably my most favorite thing in the world next to Sean Connory’s voice, was a great experience. What fell short was the actual “present” and then the Dennis Quaid present with Olivia Wilde. I now have to applaud Quaid for portraying such a sleazy and disgusting character, I found him repulsive and yet, I like Quaid. Just thinking back, I shiver inside, anyone who has seen the movie probably knows what I mean because Quaid was awfully good at being repulsive.

Feeling disconnected from the present parts of the story, I couldn’t help to feel less impressed by the movie and yet, every scene with Ben Barnes was brilliant and ironically the ones with Irons, Cooper seemed to posses better qualities as an actor next to him. Or maybe it was just Irons’ professionalism rubbing off on him which wasn’t the case with Zoe Saldana. Man, I like that woman, she has come a long way since that Britney Spears flick where she played a spoiled little b*tch but there were only couple of scenes where I enjoyed hers and Cooper’s chemistry. One being the one where he was drunk which isn’t a good sign.

Anyway, I feel like I have no words to describe this movie, nor do I feel like this is a brilliant 60th movie review of 2012 – I will try to do better next time, I promise! A part of the problem is the fact that I didn’t watch a great movie, The Words was a mediocre good movie and it’s really not ideal to review that kind of movies. Great ones you can write for hours about, the ones you hated will probably produce even more words and yet, the ones you kind of liked and kind of didn’t will forever remain in the field of trying to pull out as many words as possible. Ironic, since the movie is titled The Words and I’m lost for words to speak of this movie further. I’ll just remind myself of the fact that if they would ever make a short out of the flashback scenes with Ben Barnes, I would love that movie! That is probably why I’m giving it such a high rating, that, and Jeremy Irons and his “rich and haunting voice” as IMDb puts it. With that, I’m off to listen to his voice.