UNDERSTANDING SCREENWRITING: Some Good, Some Not-So-Good, And a Real Stinker

Accept This Invitation. 

The Invite (2026. Screenplay by Will McCormack & Rashida Jones, based on the film Sentimental by Cesc Gay. 107 minutes) 

Some complicated administrative details first. The official credits are a tad misleading. Sentimental is not a film. It was a screenplay written by the Spanish writer-producer Cesc Gay. The film he directed from it is titled The People Upstairs (2020). Sentimetal was the original title, but it was released under the different title. Then the script was remade in five different countries under different names. Talk about having a great agent. 

Finally, this year comes the American version and it is a dandy. Not having seen any of the other six versions, I have no idea how much the writers of this one, McCormack & Jones, borrowed from any or all of the previous versions. 

In 2012, McCormack & Jones wrote Celeste and Jesse Forever. As you can tell from my review here, it was sort of a mess, especially in writing the character of Celeste. They are much, much better here. They are much sharper about the characters, especially the women (Jones maybe learned from her mistakes with the heroine of the earlier film?). I do not know how much they borrowed in terms of character. 

What I do know is that their dialogue is sharp and to the point and gets the movie off to a great start. Joe, a depressed music teacher, comes home to find Angela, his wife, preparing for the guests they have invited for dinner. Joe has no recollection about the invitation. Angela insists she told him last night. Listen carefully to the dialogue (everywhere in the film) and you will later find out Angela may not be telling the truth.  

Other than he may just be in a foul mood, Joe is not at all sure he wants this couple in his apartment. Hawk and Piña live in the apartment directly above them and they make a LOT of noise when they have sex. At three o’clock in the morning. 

So the couple shows up and fairly soon (the film moves at lightning speed) we learn that Piña is a therapist and it is not just her and her husband who are having sex. They have a lot of sex with others. A lot of others. You can see where this is headed. Except it isn’t. Well, not exactly. But not getting there is half the fun.  

The script is very sharp and very precise, which gives the actors a lot to do. Seth Rogen is Joe, and you have never seen him give as good a dramatic performance as he does here. I have not thought of Rogen as a dramatic actor, but boy he carries the load here. Angela is Olivia Wilde, who also directs. You have seen her act in a lot of movies and television stuff. You can read her IMDb page here. She directed her first feature Booksmart in 2019; you can read my review here. 

Piña is played by Penélope Cruz with great subtlety, and Edward Norton gives one of his best performances as Hawk. Wilde as the director knows how to balance the performances beautifully. Everybody gets the close-ups they need and deserve, and Wilde does not give herself more than the character needs. Not all actors directing themselves do that; you can make up your own list. 

A Good Snarky Sub-head Ruined. 

Toy Story 5 (2026. Written by Andrew Stanton & McKenna Harris (as Kenna Harris; no, I don’t know why). 102 minutes) 

I am a big fan of the first three Toy Story movies. They were fresh, funny, charming, and the end of 3 was very moving, especially for guys who loved their toys.  

4  was another matter. You can read my review here for some of the reasons. The first review I read of 5 was somewhat mixed, so I thought up a snarky sub-head for the top of the review of 5, assuming it would be as bad as 4: “Unfortunately in the Terrible Tradition of Toy Story 4.” 

Then I went to see the movie. And loved it. I was still surprised it was doing as well at the box office as it is. Although 5 is as much about the toys as the earlier, funny ones, it struck me that the storyline was more adult than the others. The first four were primarily about the toys. 5 is about the toys and the humans dealing with the computer world of today.   

The toys are upset that their new owner Bonnie is not playing with them as much, but is more involved with Lilypad, a computer tablet that she asked her parents to get her because, well, all the other kids have one. When she tried to make friends with them, they laughed at her because she is still playing with her favorite, Jessie.  

The focus of this film is on Jessie, whom some of us have been waiting on to get her opportunity to shine. Woody and Buzz show up, but both are supporting characters in this film. Still, supporting roles in a Toy Story film give you more to do than in many live action films. Buzz gets a whole troop of Buzzz-alikes to lead into action. Woody is busy trying to keep his hat on so his bald spot won’t show. A lot of the other beloved Toy Story characters show up, some with only a line or two, but we are glad to see them.  

I suspect the reason 5 plays better with kids than I thought it might is that most of them have gone through the phases from older toys to newer electronic toys. Being a luddite about computers and technology in general, I have had more problems adjusting to newer technology than most kids today have. When I have computer problems I have to call my daughter, or her husband, or my grandkids to get me out of a jam. They are very good at trying to keep Grandpa as up to date as I can stand. But I am avoiding getting a Lilypad. 

Not as Much Fun as Kirk Douglas, But… 

The Odyssey (2026. Screenplay by Christopher Nolan, based on the poem by Homer. 172 or 173 minutes, depending on who is counting) 

It’s in IMAX!!! 70MM IMAX! Complete with 15 sprocket holes per image!  

Nolan had IMAX build special IMAX cameras just for this film. And every single actor in the film has appeared on every television show and podcast--- 

Are you getting as tired as I am of all the hype about The Odyssey? The hype certainly brought people to the theatres, at least those playing the film in Imax. I saw it in a theatre not playing in Imax the week after it opened. It was an afternoon show and the auditorium was not even half full. But the screen was very large and the picture was very sharp and clear.  

Shall we get onto the script now? The script is a good, solid adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. Like Homer, Nolan begins in Ithaca, Odysseus’s home. We get the set-up: Odysseus went off to fight the Trojan War twenty years ago. The war ended ten years ago, but Odysseus has not returned home. We eventually meet Odysseus and hear his tales of what happened. Both Homer and Nolan jump around in time to keep the reader (or listener, since “Homer,” and/or a combination of people, told the story orally for years before somebody wrote it down) or viewer involved. 

While Odysseus was away, a lot of potential suitors for Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, started hanging out in the Palace. Eventually Odysseus comes home and, well, shit happens. 

There are a couple of problems with the script. The first is that the dialogue is often flat, although the actors do what they can with it and the production values of the film (which are impressive, especially in you-know-what) cover it up. The next time you see the film, listen to the dialogue. You will hear more than a few clunkers. 

The second problem is Nolan’s take on Odysseus. In Homer’s version he is always referred to as “wily Odysseus.” In Nolan’s version, everybody calls him “smart.” Excuse me, but there is a big difference between just being smart and being wily. “Smart” is just a quality he had; “wily” tells us he does stuff in inventive ways. In David Benioff’s script for Troy (2004) Odysseus is seen thinking. Then he sees one of the men whittling a small wooden horse. Odysseus does not slap his head, or yell out, “I’ve got it!” That’s showing, not telling, us that he is indeed wily. 

The problem with making him only smart and not wily is that it makes him less interesting to play. Nolan makes Odysseus a smart, troubled, emotional man, but it does not give Matt Damon enough variety to play. Part of the problem is that it seems Christopher Nolan, for all his talents, which are considerable, is not a man with much of a sense of humor.  

Nolan has commented, in all the promotional hype, that there had not really been a film from the poem. Typical director. In 1954 there was a large-scale (not as large scale as Nolan’s) Italian-American production entitled Ulysses, with Kirk Douglas as Ulysses. It has four Italian writers, plus Americans Ben Hecht (you can guess where the wiliness came from in that script) and novelist Irwin Shaw, plus Hugh Gray a classicist whose name pops up on a lot of pictures about the classical age. Douglas is perfect as the wily Ulysses, and a lot of fun to watch. Damon is not, which I would guess is Nolan’s intention: he is making a serious film. In Nolan and Damon’s defense, that seriousness pays off when Odysseus gets home and tells Penelope how he feels about what all happened to him. But I missed the dimple in Kirk’s chin. His writers gave his dimple something to do. 

Fortunately, Nolan has given the other actors a lot to do, and they deliver a set of terrific performances. Anne Hathaway is great as Penelope, and Tom Holland lets you know there is more to his Telemachus(Odysseus’s son) than others think. 

Robert Pattinson is the new Basil Rathbone as the leader of the suitors; he should stick to villains. And Samantha Morton blows everybody else off the screen as Circe, who has particular culinary habits. 

No Dart Boards. 

The Duke (2020. Screenplay by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman. 95 minutes) 

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ealing Studios in England produced a pile of great comedies: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Genevieve (1953), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), andThe Ladykillers (1955). This kind of charming comedy became known as Ealing Comedies. A news magazine at the time defined them as being “villages full of dartboard and loveable characters.” 

Occasionally movies come along that recall the heyday of the Ealing Comedies.  Earlier this year I reviewed one called The Choral, which seemed to me to be a perfect modern Ealing Comedy. You can read my review here. 

I suspect the makers of The Duke were thinking they were making an Ealing Comedy. You can see the similarities, but you can also see why it does not work in the way it should.   

The film is based on a true story. It is 1961. Kempton Bunton, age 60, objects to the then-requirement that everybody has to pay a license if they want to watch television. He has been writing letters to the BBC without success. He then sees on television (he has rigged it up so he can watch without a license) that a famous painting of the Duke of Wellington by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya is on display at the National Gallery in London. He decides to steal it, which he does. He hopes the furor will lead to getting rid of the license requirement. There is a great uproar. The police think it was a gang of professional crooks. Eventually Bunton is captured and goes on trial. Since he claims he was not doing it for financial gain, he is acquitted of taking the painting. He returns the painting, but he lost the frame, so he is only convicted of stealing the frame. He serves three months. 

Well, doesn‘t that sound like an Ealing Comedy to you? It does to me, and the trial scenes are up to that standard. Bunton is played by Jim Broadbent, who is as wonderful as you would expect.  

So what’s the problem? The writers spend a lot of time with the family, especially his wife Dorothy. The Bunton-Dorothy scenes are darker and more dramatic than the rest of the film. Dorothy is played by the great Helen Mirren, but in a lower key than Broadbent. Their scenes stop the show and not in a good way. The film would have been a lot better if the writers had found some humor in the wife that Mirren could have done something with.  

You may have seen the Goya painting and not known of its significance. In the final scene of the film, Bunton and his wife are at the movies. The film is Dr. No (1952) and in one scene in Dr. No’s hideout 007 walks by the painting, looks at it, and quickly moves on. Well, you have to learn your art history somewhere. 

A Mess…Except for… 

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (2026. Written by Ken Marino and David Wain. 94 minutes) 

This is a traditional “you buy the premise, you buy the bit” set up. Gail and Tom are soon to be married. They go to a book signing by Jennifer Aniston (one of a lot of famous people who show up in cameos), and Tom ends up having sex in a book room with Aniston. When Gail discovers them, Tom claims it is his “celebrity sex pass.” That means he is allowed to have sex with one celebrity without his fiancée getting upset. 

Well, guess what. Gail gets so upset she goes off to Hollywood to try to have sex with her celebrity crush, Jon Hamm. Highjinx ensue. A lot of highjinx. And they are not very smart ones. The dialogue is not very funny by itself, which may be why the actors, with one exception, overact. Boy, do they overact. And the more they overact, the less funny they get. David Wain also directed, badly. I can usually be counted on for several laughs in a comedy, but I laughed only once, at a silent sight gag where they cut to … well, I will let you see if you can figure it out if you get trapped into seeing this. 

The one exception to the overacting comes from Zoey Deutch. She is more restrained than anybody else in the film and delivers her lines and her reactions dead on. Not surprising. She is the daughter of Lea Thompson, of Back to the Future (1985), and director Howard Deutch, director of Pretty in Pink (1986). Zoey may be a nepo baby, but she learned her craft somewhere.