When Alex met Emma he was a destitute writer. His words had left him, he was being hounded by loan sharks and the plaster on his ceiling was crumbling away. Then the lovely Emma came into his life and at the end of the month he had a 350-page novel plus $250,000. Sounds a bit too much like a fairy tale, doesn't it, even for Hollywood? But this is based on a real-life episode of an actual writer -- Fyodor Dostoevsky to be exact.
Yes, that grand master of Russian angst had been deep in gambling debts and the only way out was to churn out a novella in 30 days. The result was that the world got an autobiographical story called "The Gambler" and Dostoevsky fell in love with his stenographer. More than a century later, this piece of literary history has inspired director Rob Reiner to make a movie and call it "Alex and Emma."
Despite its tortured Russian roots, "Alex and Emma" is feathery-light -- no strain on the nerves, no pressure on the brain cells. One small gust of Siberian wind could turn the whole thing into dust. It's hard to see anything Dostoevsky in this production, but it's also hard to see Reiner -- at least the one who directed "Stand by Me" and "When Harry Met Sally." There's very little fizz in the humor and the plot twists are about as subtle as a 14-wheeler charging down the freeway. Most of all, "Alex and Emma" suffers from formula overdose. When you consider that Reiner had practically invented the current love-story formula (boy and girl meet, they fight a lot, they part, they realize how much they need each other), "Alex and Emma" starts to seem like an exercise in irony. Or perhaps just excessive recycling.
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