Luke Wilson plays Alex, an author in debt to the Cuban mob for $100,000. He has thirty days to pay it off, which he can do by finishing his novel, but the goons have destroyed his laptop. So he hires Emma (Kate Hudson) to take dictation. She interrupts and drives him nuts. They fall in love.

Would you believe stuff like this actually happened nearly 150 years ago to the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)? Director Rob Reiner, who co-wrote the script with Adam Scheinman, thinks this material is ripe for a contemporary spin. Not really. It's a static film that searches vainly for a consistent tone as the two act out scenes from Alex's book. 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.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."