Alex & Emma

Between How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and this hackneyed calamity, bland but likable Kate Hudson--who plays insufferable, irritating-passing-as-cute single women in both films--is officially this year's queen of romantic comedy stinkers. Here she's a drab chatterbox stenographer who spends the whole picture second-guessing a writer's-blocked novelist (Luke Wilson), who has hired her to take dictation as he brainstorms his new book. As the writer's fictional plot unfolds in story-within-a-story fashion, Hudson keeps yanking the viewer out of the novel's onscreen scenes (featuring Wilson and Hudson in 1920s costume) by questioning Wilson's every plot development--while failing to point out that his story is a piece of insufferably trite, cliché-riddled, boring, charmless period-romance nonsense. From the ham-fisted, idiotically gimmicky opening in which Wilson is comically roughed up by Cuban loan sharks who demand he finish his book, to the few minutes in the last reel when once-wonderful director Rob Reiner veers away from a promising unconventional ending, there are a total of about six scattered, shining seconds of personality in this un-tethered, blatantly over-scripted mess of a movie. Not recommended. [Note: Available in both widescreen and full screen versions, DVD extras include audio commentary by director Rob Reiner and costar Luke Wilson, and a trailer. Bottom line: a skimpy extras package for one of Rob Reiner's rare misses.] (R. Blackwelder)