Crashing

Geez it's been a while since I've written a review but I've been in a rut seeing action-prison-bad-guy-does-good genre flicks that usually end up boring me after 20 minutes. The last film that actually amused me was the latest Star Trek (2009). It's been a dry spell when it comes to movies that go beyond face value - I kid you not...

Crashing (2007) had me interested from the starting credit music - a quirky, sparse little woodwind theme that would be repeated throughout the film.

The film is about a the travails of a writer, Richard McMurray (Campbell Scott) stumbling over himself and the roadblock of first novel success. Comfortable, complacent and frustrated by eternally trying to repeat the formula of his first book.

Richard's life gets ripped apart when his wife kicks him out of the house and freezes his bank accounts. At a creative writing presentation he tells of his writer's block and new sense of heady liberation due to circumstances beyond his control, and gets invited to crash at the apartment of a female student. And so Richard ends up sleeping on the couch of coeds Kristen and Jacqueline, provided that he critiques their own writing endeavors.

Much credit to Izabella Miko and Lizzy Caplan, who nicely contrast each other as the muse twins of dark and light. I've been a fan of Campbell Scott since Roger Dodger (2002) and here he is just as amusingly self-deprecating.

It's an engrossing movie that will pull you in as the author and two young girls intertwine in life and in fiction.