MOVIE REVIEW: “Best sellers” will leave you sold

At first glance, “Best Sellers” (isn’t that a compound word?) seems like a bland title belonging to a succession of self-help books which made bank by telling a bunch of no-hopers they had hope.

But, after you get through the first 50 minutes of this 1 hour 40 minute picture, you will witness a cinematic metamorphosis of “Best Sellers” from movie to film.

Yes, there is more than a subtle difference between movies and films.

This difference is brought out by Harris Shaw (Michael Caine), an ill-humored writer who has suffered writer’s block for so long; he had to say “so long” to his writing career.

We are talking about writer’s block for close to 50 years, a not-so golden jubilee, after having written a book entitled “Atomic Autumn” that was a contender in the “great American novel” sweepstakes.

That’s when Lucy Stanbridge  (Aubrey Plaza) shows up as a publisher, at the end of her rope, with a contract for Shaw to sign in order to get his words back in print and her publishing house out of the woods.

Lucy’s soppiness is a far-cry from Plaza’s usual deadpan comedic delivery. Here, she’s a nervy brunette who always seems one step away from singing R Kelly’s “Heaven I need a hug”.

Of course, as you guessed it, the angry author and nail-chomping publisher go back and forth with the intensity of a Wilder versus Tyson Fury bout, until they are both victims of Love TKO.

This prompts this picture’s tonal transition from movie to film.

After all, it came out the blocks with its tail as its navigator; going in circles with a certain hula hoop charm to it. But then, when Harris slowly emerges from his thin shell, the storyline becomes more layered.

To top it all, the aesthetics, movement, light, and sound emotionally engage and intellectually stimulate the viewer while being leavened by some clever throwaway lines.

When Lucy, with the moral support of her trusty assistant Rachel (Ellen Wong), pulls back the first layer of Harris’s crankiness, a new novel, “The Future Is X-Rated”, hits the book stores.

It is then freighted by an ill-fated publicity tour.

Here, thanks to Shaw’s whisky-happy, antisocial behavior, he becomes a social media hit.

That’s what happens when you urinate on your own book, at your own book reading, and use the word “bullshite” to describe everything like you’re a foulmouthed rendering of the book of Ecclesiastes.

As Shaw snags a viral online following, something about the shallowness of social media is revealed.

Because, as he becomes more popular, his book is forgotten: “I knew he pissed on a book, but didn’t know he wrote one!” says one fan.

He is like a latter-day Lord Byron: people are more interested in who he is than what he has written.

But does he care?

Not particularly, he is too busy staggering in the image of Johnny Walker’s gait to notice that he’s walking a fine between becoming a caricature and personifying a complete joke.

Anyway, as he becomes a fixture on the social media landscape, he unwittingly cultivates the tension between art and celebrity by becoming an embodiment of the latter.

However, as Lucy pulls back more layers of Shaw’s nihilistic personality, Shaw goes from Saul to Paul.

It is here that we see the depth that made Shaw such an excellent writer as he evolves from a Byronic cautionary tale, with little substance beyond his substance abuse, to carrying the emotional punch of a W. H. Auden poem.

By the end of the film, you might have to push down that lump in your throat.