Mark Reviews Movies: BEST SELLERS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 16, 2021

Anthony Grieco's screenplay for Best Sellers severely shifts tone and purpose in its third act. Until then, it's a somewhat clever story, looking at and satirizing the shallowness of celebrity in a world of viral sensations and empty catchphrases. There's a decent idea, as well as a couple of solid performances, here, but that last-act change only confirms that Grieco and director Lina Roessler (making her feature debut) aren't sure what to do with the original conceit.

The movie stars Michael Caine, as an aging and curmudgeonly author who hasn't had any work published in decades, and Aubrey Plaza, as the new head of the publishing house that solid the author's last—and only—book. The character of Harris Shaw (Caine) is established in his first scene, typing away at an almost-completed manuscript while smoking cigars and drinking plenty of whiskey, becoming increasingly angry with a ringing telephone, and finally throwing the phone out his window.

There isn't much nuance to the man, aside from his grief for his long-dead wife, and there doesn't need to be for the first stage of this story—or for Caine to make the author entertainingly brash, irritable, and insulting, for that matter. That begins when Lucy Stanbridge (Plaza), who has inherited a publishing company from her father, comes up with a last-ditch plan to save the company from being sold to a competitor and, apparently, ex-boyfriend (played by Scott Speedman).

The publisher's most recent young adult novel is a critical (A newspaper review means nothing, compared to the devastating words of a child in an online video) and commercial flop. The company needs a hit, and maybe, Lucy can find someone who already has a contract with the publisher to fulfill that goal. As it turns out, Harris took an advance for a follow-up novel decades ago. He owes them a new book.

The author agrees, as long as Lucy doesn't make any edits to his manuscript. She agrees to those terms, as long as Harris joins her on a tour to publicize the novel's release.

A lot of these early moving parts (the ex looking to buy the company, the actual publication of the novel, and Harris attacking a snobby book critic, played in a cameo by Cary Elwes) don't really matter until there needs to be additional conflict or, in a couple cases, at all. The initial point is the comic dichotomy between the mean, apathetic Harris—who doesn't care if his book sells and sees Lucy as a spoiled product of nepotism—and the determined, desperate, and over-achieving Lucy—who's out to prove herself to everyone who has doubted her. Traveling the country in Harris' car, the two bicker, while the author makes a drunken mockery of the book tour—until only bars are slightly interested in hosting the events.

Something somewhat intriguing happens, as Harris keeps repeating the same swear for cow manure, instead of reading from his novel, and urinates on a copy of his own work on the tour. He becomes an internet celebrity, with people coming to events, just to see the old grump in action. Lucy gains some hope, but nobody is actually buying or reading the book.

The potential for a promising idea arises in this development, which feels authentic and pointed in the current climate of internet fame. It's the spectacle of Harris' antics and the resulting celebrity itself that make him notable in the moment, but it's an empty fame, summed up by his repeated curse word (which Lucy attempts to sell on T-shirts—with a free book included) and pointing toward nothing, except itself.

There's something to this, although Grieco clearly doesn't know where to take it, as Lucy comes up with a plan to turn Harris' internet fame into book sales (by having strangers read passages), only for the entire notion to be sidelined. The relationship between the publisher and the author, who come to a kind of mutual respect, takes over, only for Harris' tragic past and feelings of inadequacy to once again change the entire point of the story. The final act is predictable and far more cloying than Harris' brazen personality would seem to allow, but in focusing clearly on a single and inevitable idea, there is at least some sincerity to the turn.

Through it all, Caine and Plaza's respective performances and evolving harmony do keep the material grounded in some comic back-and-forth and emotional earnestness. That dynamic goes a certain distance in lending some direction and honesty to a movie that is all over the place in terms of tone and its actual point. Ultimately, Best Sellers means well, as it charts the development of an unlikely friendship, but in attempting to do so many additional and—when it comes to the idea of celebrity in the modern world—much bolder things, the movie comes across as distracted and unsure of itself.

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