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The flip-side of Bowfinger, this chide at show biz focuses not on Tinsel Town's star struck wannabes, but on the Blissfully Anointed who desperately scratch to maintain their impossibly elevated stations in La La Land. In fact, so great is the fear of falling from filmic grace that they'll stoop, or, in this case, ascend, to anything that promises to prevent said unthinkable horror.
And since they're all too smart and sarcastic to believe that it's talent or assiduity which support their lofty positions, the more mystical the choice of career elixir the better. So when screenwriter Steven Phillips (Brooks) is told by smarmy studio bigwig Josh Martin (Mark Feuerstein) that they'll be cancelling his three-picture deal because he has "lost it", lost his edge that is (the callous exec prefacing that this was his polite way of putting it), it matters little that he has penned 17 produced screenplays, garnered a humanitarian award and earned an Oscar nomination. He's finished. Kaput. The studio would like him out by 5 p.m.; they need his office for Brian DePalma.
Hence only a brief moment of incredulity passes before a very successful writer-friend (Jeff Bridges as Jack Warrick) convinces Steven that retaining a real live muse is the answer. Why, of course they exist. And what's more, everybody's doing it, which provides the film an opportunity for beaucoup celebrity cameos. Amusingly interspersed among the fluffy string of casually connected vignettes posing as Mr. Brooks's screenplay (co-authored with Monica Johnson), there's a hyperkinetic Martin Scorsese ranting about doing a Raging Bull sequel, "but this time with a really skinny guy," and a very cautious James Cameron (Titanic) being warned to "stay away from water" this go-round.
Enter the muse. Or is it princess? The professionally inspiring daughter of Zeus who figures in our poor schlemiel's futurre, splendidly fashioned by a comically astute Sharon Stone, goes by the mortal name of Sarah. But her services will cost you. First you have to woo the mysterious personage with gifts of application (something from Tiffany's might do, just for starters), praying that she'll deign to take you on as a client. After all, there's a creativity crisis stalking the land, and apparently Hollywood's calling.
Brooks does a funny bit with a key ring here as Steven first tries to obtain Sarah on the cheap. But the major league afflatus soon reads him the riot act. It only makes sense: He stands to make a lot of money after she vaporises his writer's block; the muse merely wants her percentage. Thus, the writer is soon footing the bill for Sarah's $1,700-a-night, indefinite stay at the Four Seasons, scurrying to fill her refrigerator with speciality foods and personally delivering (at all hours) Waldorf salads from Spago's. For all this, she inexplicably takes him on a field trip to the aquarium. The aquarium?
Now, not only is the cinema scribe without ideas or inspiration, but also confused to boot. Meanwhile, the meter is running. The writer anguishes. Why the aquarium? Is it a metaphor? He begs for a sign.
Eventually, forever-fretting Steven takes it on face value and actually hatches an idea for a comedy about an unlikely aquarium owner, a swarm of bothersome creditors and a batch of sick fish. Alas, now there is new trouble. He has no third act. Understand, though: Steven is a caricature, and it's in his nature to whine no matter the workings of the plot...even when things are going well. Though portrayed by the perennially likeable Mr. Brooks, the instant-on malcontent routine does get a tad tiring.
Earning minor redemption, the director tosses in a bit of a twist concerning the comely Andie MacDowell as Mrs. Writer's Block, the ever-supportive Laura. While it initially looks like the yarn will have her thinking hubby is having an affair, the filmmaker swings it in a different direction. Instead, once Steven explains Sarah's role in his plight, she unselfishly suggests that they accommodate the goddess on a wait-and-see basis. But here's the rub. It seems that Laura has long dormant creative aspirations of her own, as well as a great cookie recipe. And all it takes is this Svengali of a muse to convince her that she can be the next Mrs. Fields. Voila, with Sarah and Laura getting all chummy and surfing the L.A. culinary circuit together, put-upon Steven can now add muse envy to his bag of ailments. "Hey, what about my third act?" is written in furrows on his forehead.
By this time, the paid inspiration has since checked out of her posh but "lonely" hotel room and displaced her clients in their very own master bedroom. The assumption is that a comfortable muse is an effective muse. Adding insult to injury, Miss Encouragement has begun helping the children with their homework. They now lovingly refer to her as auntie.
A great student of comedy, Brooks insinuates various laugh agents at different junctures of his inconsistent but nonetheless bubbly farce. Here, the old stand-by is the intruder as favoured guest, wherein the family patriarch is relegated to little better than fool status while the interloper is advanced to sainthood. A classic example witnesses such a fate for brooding Eugene Pallette in My Man Godfrey when William Powell's "lost man" does soul-soothing miracles for this early take on the American family in dysfunction. A more modern rendering would be the outrageous incursions Bill Murray makes in What About Bob. Like most of the patchwork quilt of humorous mechanisms Mr. Brooks attempts in The Muse, the old ploy works, somewhat. This also describes Mr. Brooks's good-natured diatribe in general: all hook, very little story and, tsk, tsk, no comic soul to call its own.
The resultant dearth of characterisation makes for more flat spots than can be comfortably ignored. And a bailout ending, more glib than satisfying, cynically points out that there's no real moral to this sardonic tale of heartless Hollywood.
Still, Brooks is almost always endearing as the Baby Boomer version of Woody Allen; the neurotic schnook as unlikely hero, but without the guilty dark side (and not nearly the same amount of motion picture genius). And if you can get past the flaws, it's fun to watch the comic auteur ply his shtick, incongruously mixing neo-vaudeville routines with sitcom predicaments and stand-up routines.
Since The Muse is so obviously lacking in the denouement and climax departments, doubtless the ready irony of a much needed third act will not be lost on every film critic and their grandmother in search of a closing line. They'll inevitably suggest that Mr. Brooks might have benefited from some outside inspiration of his own. My muse advises me to stay dignified and clear of such easy pot shots.
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