There's a certain sort of movie or television fare that I like to have tuned in on telly in the background while I'm doing boring housework. The show has to be interesting enough to divert me, but not interesting enough to demand my full attention, because then I won't get the housework done.
'Mr Write' came on while I was housecleaning. It proved to be *more* boring than housework ... and I was just about to switch off, when there was one clever piece of dialogue. A man asks his wife where the toothpaste is, and she replies 'It's in the tube marked "Crest".' I was impressed with this line; it's not especially funny, but it's a clever way to get a product plug into the dialogue.
So now get this ironic plot. Paul Reiser plays a struggling playwright. Out of the blue comes a candy manufacturer played by Martin Mull, whom I've never found remotely funny. (I've found Reiser funny elsewhere, but not here.) Mull offers to bankroll a production of Reiser's play. Reiser agrees, but then he learns there's a catch: the dialogue and staging of the play must include several references to Mull's product Chocolate Ding-a-Lings. Suddenly, Reiser's character has artistic qualms.
Huh? Wha-? I know for a fact that many live-theatre productions contain commercial plugs. What Reiser has been offered here is nothing new. And of course this same thing -- product placement -- happens in movies routinely. Reiser's response is utterly implausible. Even more implausible is the fact that Mull is able to put his Ding-a-Lings into the script without Reiser's consent or even his knowledge. Under the terms of the Dramatists Guild agreement, a stage play (unlike a movie or TV script) CANNOT be altered without the playwright's consent.
All of this hugger-mugger pluggery is made more contrived because of the presence of that line about Crest toothpaste, suggesting that the people who made this film are very familiar with how product placement works.
Elsewhere in this wretched movie, we have a prole character who compares himself to 'that guy Willy Loman'? Why can't he just cite Willy Loman, and leave 'that guy' out of it? Obviously, the scriptwriter assumes we've never heard of 'Death of a Salesman', or perhaps that we won't believe that this character would be familiar with the play.
Jane Leeves, whom I've found very funny and extremely sexy elsewhere, is wasted here as a woman from Leeds (with the wrong accent). I'll rate this rubbish exactly one point, for that toothpaste gag.
