The Nice Little Film That Dreamed Too Big

Rating: 6/10 (28 October 2019)

I rewatched this again tonight for the first time since it came out, and remembered nothing at all about it going in but the premise, along with the lingering impression that it was a fairly likeable mainstream Hollywood attempt at fabricating some of that elusive Charlie Kaufman "Being John Malkovich" magic and acclaim.
And the thing is, it's such a lovely premise - a man becomes aware he is a character in a book and due to be killed off - but the film has no way of satisfactorily ending it. It aspires to have as grand a finale as Emma Thompson's character's novel within the film, but likewise chickens out and so ends up a puzzling and pointless mediocrity, which no amount of swelling music, uplifting montages and platitudes can obscure.
I enjoyed my time spent with the characters, and indeed, there's a lot to like about every one of them, and every actor playing them. But by the end one feels, unfortunately, that it has been all for nothing and that the filmmakers were floundering out of their depth almost from the start, not knowing what they wanted to say or how to say it.