Best Sellers: Movie Review

Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Sir Michael Caine, Scott Speedman
Director: Lina Roessler

Essentially an odd couple road movie about a washed-up author and a struggling publishing house head, Best Sellers offers some easy laughs, a terrific performance from Aubrey Plaza and everything you'd expect from a cantankerous Michael Caine.

Plaza is Lucy Stanbridge, whose publishing empire is on the verge of falling to a takeover and who needs one big hit to pull her back from the brink. When she discovers that former cult writer Harris Shaw (Caine) owes them a book from an old contract, she chases it up and reluctantly, he's forced to deliver.

Believing this is her shot, Lucy sets up a book tour for Shaw and the two set across America to sell it - but the nihilistic Shaw is determined to ruin every shot, from drink-swilled appearances to urinating on his book in public. However, the nihilism backfires, and soon Shaw is a cult hit....

Best Sellers does little to challenge perceptions, but delivers a feisty performance from Plaza as Stanbridge, someone who's struggling to find her place out of her father's shadow and who finds an unwanted father figure in Caine's cranky Shaw.

Veering more into safe territory than anything truly challenging, and with Caine pretty much phoning in a performance that you'd expect from the magnificent maestro, Roessler's film does exactly what you'd expect from its mismatched duo road trip. 

It's fairly formulaic in parts too, with a few sporadic laughs coming mainly from Shaw's insistence on avoiding his contractual obligations. (A confrontation with Carey Elwes' book reviewer being one of the highlights.)

But Book Sellers can't avoid the mawkish and in its final third settles for a more maudlin and emotionally manipulative approach that serves to reinforce all of the cliches and conventions of its story as the curmudgeon reveals his true colours.

Book Sellers isn't a best seller by any stretch of the imagination and a final twist doesn't hit any of the heights it aspires to. Ultimately, it's an easy, but forgettable watch that's less of a cinematic page-turner and more a celebration of a great relationship between its two stars on screen.