Stuck in Love

Stuck in Love (2012) is about a family of writers. Bill has been divorced three years and still believes his wife will come back; he sets an extra place at the table every evening. His daughter Samantha has published her first novel and refuses to attach herself to anyone. His son Rusty has just started writing and is waiting to fall in love. All three write, and all three are hopeless at the same thing. It is Josh Boone's first film and he wrote it. He would go on to make The Fault in Our Stars. Its best idea is the family's shared habit: the father sets his children writing assignments, and what they write becomes the film's narration. Stephen King is in it as a writer the characters talk about, and has a line on the telephone; he read the script and agreed to take part himself. Greg Kinnear plays the father, Lily Collins the daughter, Nat Wolff the son and Jennifer Connelly the mother. It was made cheaply and released in limited cinemas, building its following through streaming. It runs 97 minutes. Good for: stories about writing, family drama, and quiet independent films. Less good for: the way the characters talk through literature is artificial and some lines read like quotations. A subplot about drugs and abuse is taken seriously and then resolved quickly. The father's fixation is romanticised.