Parents' Guide to Authors Anonymous

Unless a director is named Christopher Guest, chances are slim that their mockumentary will seem anything but derivative and decidedly unfunny; that's certainly the case here. Ellie Kanner's Authors Anonymous is so bad that you should only watch it if you experience extreme schadenfreude at seeing once-bankable actors like Polo and Klein in a bottom-rung film ... or for the more charitable reason of paying tribute to the late, great character actor Farina, in his penultimate film. (Actually, that's no reason at all, because you're better off streaming Get Shorty or binge-watching Farina's 46 episodes on Law & Order than sitting through this drivel.)

That said, Farina's military-loving author (who refers to himself in the third person at all times) is perhaps the only character who comes close to making viewers laugh, usually when he's interacting with his German beauty of a girlfriend, Sigrid (Tricia Helfer). A screenwriter who's going to make fun of publishing should at least be funny, which this script is definitely not. There's a lot of physical humor and hamming it up for the camera, but all of it is overdone and forgettable. Audiences aren't going to laugh so much as cringe.