Alex & Emma

2003 Comedy

Rob Reiner directs Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson in Alex & Emma, a romantic comedy about an author and his secretary. Gangsters will kill Alex (Wilson) in 30 days if he doesn't pay back his gambling debts. The only way he can do that is to finish his new novel. He hires sassy court stenographer Emma (Hudson) to transcribe his dictation. The film intercuts between the two of them writing the story, and the story within the story. Hudson plays three roles in the film, and Wilson plays two. Sophie Marceau and David Paymer round out the cast. The premise is (very) loosely based on a series of events that befell Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Director: Rob Reiner

Starring: Luke Wilson, Kate Hudson,Sophie Marceau, David Paymer,Rob Reiner

 30 Reviews

Reviews

  • Reiner gets lucky with his two stars. Wilson has charm to spare, and Hudson brings humor and sexiness to playing Emma and four au pair girls from different countries. But even they can't float a balloon with lead in it.

    Peter Travers - Rolling Stone

    19 January 2013

  • A cute and amusing little romance that has all the fiery impetuosity of an egg sandwich.

    Mick LaSalle - The San Francisco Chronicle

    19 January 2013

  • Though it has some mildly amusing moments (mostly in the visuals accompanying the novel's narration), Alex & Emma is disappointing, neither very romantic nor very comic.

    Claudia Puig - USA Today

    19 January 2013

  • Emma writes everything down and then offers helpful suggestions, although she fails to supply the most useful observation of all, which would be to observe that the entire novel is complete crap.

    Roger Ebert - The Chicago Sun-Times

    19 January 2013

  • It's hard to say what's more excruciating: Alex's novel, which is like ''The Great Gatsby'' rewritten by Lizzie McGuire, or his quarrelsome flirtation with Emma, who has no existence as a character apart from her drive to reshape Alex into a specimen of respectable tamed manhood.

    Owen Gleiberman - Entertainment Weekly

    19 January 2013

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