And it's certainly not impossible that Hannah could win a huge advance for her fiction without knowing what a metaphor is or being able to name a single author she enjoys. But it would be nice to have a clue to her appeal. We don't know a thing about her book except that it has a dumb title (Sleeping on the Moon) and involves romance. From this we're apparently supposed to deduce that Hannah is undeserving of success, while the Fitzgerald enthusiast, who has an unrequited crush on her, must be an unsung talent because he enjoys Great Literature written by canonical white males. 

Nothing against the great Fitzgerald, but that's just lazy, unimaginative stereotyping. I'm a writer, dammit. If Hannah has written a horrible book with best-seller potential, perhaps a tender romance that started as a Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction, I want to hear just how bad it is!

But here's where we run up against the problem that people writing, or reading their writing, just aren't cinematic.

1-4 points: Do the characters seem like real people? Failing that, do they look pretty?
2/4. Saying these characters seem like anything but tired clichés would be a stretch, but the comic acting is still a saving grace of Authors Anonymous. Walsh and Polo, in particular, interact amusingly as the fatuous central couple and deserve a better script.

There's an unlikely subplot about faux Tom Clancy's gorgeous German girlfriend that seems to have no purpose except to put Tricia Helfer of "Battlestar Galactica" in the movie. Jonathan Banks is likewise shoehorned in as a grumpy literary agent, but I can never complain about an opportunity to see a grumpy Jonathan Banks.

1-4 points: Does the movie give us a reason to care about anything happening on screen?
0/4. When Authors Anonymous attempts to get serious and make us care about Klein's bland character and his quest for love and a publishing contract, that's when it goes from fun-but-forgettable to deeply annoying.

Guest knew better than to exempt anyone in his films from mockery — all satirists do. By ridiculing some of these characters far more gently than others, Kanner makes a film that actually feels more mean-spirited toward aspiring authors than it should.

Verdict: 7/20. I still think someone could make an astute filmic satire of a writers' critique group, somehow. This ain't it.

In Theaters This Week

Chadwick Boseman plays James Brown in the biopic Get On Up. More Marvel Comics characters come to life in Guardians of the Galaxy, directed by James Gunn (Slither, Super).

At the Roxy and Savoy, the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in the le Carré adaptation A Most Wanted Man. At the Savoy only, The Grand Seduction offers Canadian small-town comedy.

This Week in Your Living Room