Author Anonymous tells the story of a handful of would be authors who aren’t very good writers. A Vet tells war stories no one cares about. A cheating wife tells stories about cheating wives. A pizza delivery driver tells stories about a guy who delivers pizzas. One fellow has only written three pages, but he keeps tweaking those three pages until they are as close to perfect as possible. Then there is a cute girl who gets an agent, a book deal, and a movie deal in rapid succession. The conflict in Authors Anonymous is about how the other members of the writer’s group deal with her success.
The big name star in Authors Anonymous is Kaley Cuoco, who plays Penny on The Big Bang Theory. She plays kind of the opposite of the ever struggling Penny here as she becomes the overnight success after she takes a writing class and her teacher pass on the first chapter of her book to an agent. Other familiar faces include Battlestar Gallatica’s Tricia Helfer, Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks, and Dennis Farina. The rest of the cast is made of TV actors whose work I’m not familiar with.
Author Anonymous is filmed in annoyovision documentary format, the idea being that we are watching as a documentary is made. Only it’s a documentary with a minimum of two camera angles on every event and the first camera is never seen in the second camera’s shot. About the time you decide that they have given up on this silly documentary idea, someone looks into the camera and says-What’s going on? thus breaking what little flow there is in this dull and boring story.
Authors Anonymous was an interesting idea that didn’t really go anywhere. Then there is the slightly unrealistic bit where four of the five authors in the group are published by the time the closing credits roll. Ok, one of them self published, but that is a pretty viable option these days. How many writer’s groups have a ninety percent success rate? Then there is the implication that Kaley slept her way to the top. Is there a casting couch in the publishing world? Even worse is a scene where a Literary Agent invites someone into her office and DEMANDS they write a book for her.
Quick, Someone get the Standard Rich and Famous Contract for Kermit the Frog and Company!
Like most Indepent Films, Authors Anonymous wasn’t all that good.
