Waste of a potentially great idea

Rating: 6/10 (22 April 2007)

Having seen the trailer for this film, I was moderately interested in how it would play out. Having seen the film, I am quite disappointed. Will Farrell is yet another SNL grad who, for my money, should stick to sketch comedy and films that mimic that short-attention-span genre, ie. Anchorman. I really liked the notion of a character discovering that his life is a fiction produced by someone else's imagination. I think there's a lot can be done with that. But this film didn't manage to do that much other than make it a cute comedy with a few clever lines. Maggie Gyllenhall is completely unbelievable as an anarchist; check out her apartment. Dustin Hoffman is on auto-pilot. Emma Thompson seems to have picked up Kenneth Branagh's taste for chewing scenery, and Queen Latifah looks completely bored. Poor acting, a half-baked (pun intended) script. Oh, by the way, it isn't Monty Python and the Holy Grail that you see on the television, it's the infamous Mr Creosote scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. I've never been a big fan of Charlie Kaufman, but this disaster puts his skillful handling of similar narratives into sharp relief.