Once again, inside this film was a truly great film

Rating: 4/10 (11 March 2007)

What a disappointment! I was truly looking forward to this and prepared to absolutely love it. Ouch.
A great cast assembled by a talented director, unusual location for its topic (Chicago) good music, innovative graphics, what could go wrong? Let me count the ways. There was stupendous potential in the whole premise. It could have been brought into a totally surreal level between writer's block and perhaps a diabolical controlling influence of the protagonist, along with an older female author falling in love perhaps with her younger hero. None of this transpired. Instead we get everybody just about woefully miscast. Linda Hunt wasted. Dustin Hoffman completely miscast as a literature professor and part-time life guard for the faculty (huh?). An unrecognizabe Tom Hulce in a tiny bit part, Queen Latifah as set decoration as her role made no sense whatsoever and should have wound up on the cutting room floor.
How many times can one watch Will Ferrell brushing his teeth and tying his tie? Yeah, he's a compulsive counter, we get that from the on-screen graphics. But the knuckle-dragging audience needs at least eight planks on the head to alert them to this. And Maggie Gylenhall as an anarchist who mentions insignificant political matters but doesn't mention the Iraq war and she drops out of Harvard to get her arm covered in tattoos? Doesn't every decent anarchist worthy of the name?
Cardboard thin characters in a transparent plot. No tension, no chemistry, no plot. I kept imagining what it could have been in the right hands and right cast and with a decent script that hasn't been done a thousand times, and better, before. And just about wept in frustration.
4 out 10, a snore-inducing waste of time.