An underachieving writer plagiarizes a novel which turns out to be a best-seller. The actual author privately comes forward telling the background story. The plagiarist is torn between his false success and conscience. He unsuccessfully tries to correct things but it's too late to turn the clock back. The original author dies and the plagiarist moves on. This is a good and engaging story told in a multilayered fashion. While the acting, directing and cinematography are in general good, Jeremy Irons arguably shows his class among the cast. Despite its nonlinear narrative, the plot is not convoluted and easy to follow. The emotional story involving Jeremy Iron's young life sounds genuine with the exception of the final scene: his former wife's new life seems too perfect for a traumatized person and overly dramatizes his story. However, this doesn't take away much from the movie. It's not clear what the outermost layer adds to the movie with Dennis Quaid's lead except that it gives some kind of unnecessary ambiguity to an otherwise perfectly closed case.

The film has a lot of layers to it. Author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is reading from his novel, "The Words." The film then goes on about the novel of a struggling writer (Bradley Cooper) and his wife (Zoe Saldana). While the struggling writer is honeymooning in Paris he comes across an old novel which he passes off as his own. The novel is about an American in Paris at the end of WWII, which becomes a story within a story within the movie.As it turns out the author is still alive. As we glimpse back to the present, Clay Hammond is being seduced by a college student (Olivia Wilde) who is fascinated with his work.The movie attempts to deal with the guilt people feel for doing the wrong thing, then being unable to atone for it. Actions have consequences that sometimes cannot be made correct. Unfortunately the ending proved predictable for a fine story.Parental Guide: 8 F-bombs. No sex or nudity. Implied sex.

The WordsOne would assume that a tale that depicts multiple authors with parallel plotline that goes deep into a narration within a narration, would wind up with making some sense or point, one is wrong. The writers may have an idea to begin with but that is not what gets you on the other side of the road and in here there are way too many ups and downs with a congested traffic where there is no room of art or craft. The feature is poorly executed with not a single lose thread to offer to the audience for them to hold on to this overlong journey. Unfortunately, the performance is dull too, which comes as a bit of a shock considering the cast it contains like Bradley Cooper, Denis Quaid, Jeremy Irons, Zoe Saldana and Olivia Wilde. The Words is an expired slow pill with a character driven tone that has to offer a wafer thin script, which pretty much tells you why it never reaches its destination.

I put off watching this because of all the terrible reviews out there but I actually really enjoyed it. The Words is a layered romantic drama. A story-within-a-story-within-a-story is the best way I can describe it and its cleverly done, following Bradley Cooper as a struggling writer who finds an old manuscript in a bag and before he knows what he's doing writes the entire thing up on his computer and then passes it off as his own. 'Rory' rockets to fame, credited with writing the next great American novel but experiences a crisis of conscience after meeting the man whose work he stole, in fact life, as we flashback to the real author as a young man and discover his heartbreaking autobiography. Meanwhile a greasy Dennis Quaid has written a book about a famous author stealing another man's work. I think everyone will get something different from this, its layered, engaging and filled with good preformances. A surprise hit for me, I thought about for days afterwards.