Stanley Tucci is an amazing actor, and in this film we were only treated to a mere glimpse of his ability. The best performance, I think, was by Paul Giamatti as his long-suffering ghost writer. This film was engaging, and at times it was very much so. However, it tries to convey too much history and too much time in its hour and fifty minutes. I don't know, some movies manage to tell the story of someone's entire life and make it seem like a life is actually passing by. This one, however, seemed fragmented. They began to lose me with each large jump in the timeline. It was like a synopsis of his life--it left me wanting more because it only seemed to scratch the surface of the many events in his life (for example, when he went to Brazil during WWII).