Adaptation.

I was not as enamored of this film as everyone else seems to be. The consensus seems to be that it's a quirky film, which is neat in and of itself and therefore worth seeing. I'm not sure I agree. The acting is stellar. I have no quarrel with that. It's that the concept of a screenwriter having trouble writing a screenplay and therefore showing us that particular struggle was irritating to me. In fact, he says it himself in the movie -- it's solipsistic. Why should I care about him and his struggles with the screenplay? I'd care a lot more about a movie about the actual book! I fully understand that the premise of the film is also the "trick" of the film, but that's all there is to it. The theme of finding something you're passionate about (i.e., flowers) is engulfed by the theme of discovering a way to write something you can't write. Besides which, in the "third act" he gives us a completely untrue fantasy tale about Susan Orlean (the author of the book it's based on) and drug smuggling, which if it's not supposed to be a cliche, what IS it supposed to be? I was rather appalled by that choice of ending. I hope Orlean was. I fully expected to love this film (as I loved Being John Malkovich), so I'm honestly surprised at my reaction.

year: 2002
length: 114 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268126/combined