Movie Review: 'Best Sellers' Starring Aubrey Plaza

Best Sellers is a frustratingly conventional movie about two opposites forced to work together. It’s frustrating because this highly conventional comedy premise stars the remarkably unconventional Aubrey Plaza. Aubrey is far too interesting for a conventional comedy. Her talent for spiky line delivery and brilliantly awkward comedy defies convention. See movies like Black Bear or Safety Not Guaranteed or even a movie of hers that I don’t care for like Ingrid Goes West. Regardless of the role, or the quality of the movie, Aubrey Plaza can’t be confined by plot.

This is why Best Sellers is so maddening. Plaza is forced into a sort of straight man role to Michael Caine’s drunkard author and she appears to be fighting her instincts to remain confined within this highly conventional opposites becoming partners story. You can see Plaza visibly chomping at the bit to do something outside the box only to reign in her remarkable instincts in favor of Michael Caine’s shockingly dull performance.

Best Sellers stars Aubrey Plaza as Lucy Stanbridge, the heir to a publishing franchise. As we join the story, Lucy’s most recent book, a YA fantasy about dragons or some such thing, has failed. Reviews of the book actually take time to trash the publisher of the book for the bad taste of releasing this tripe. The review also serves as a rather lame exposition dump on how poorly things have gone at the publishing house since Lucy replaced her father at the front of the brand.

Lucy needs a hit, a big bestseller and her prospects are dim. Then, out of nowhere, she stumbles over the contract her father signed with a legendary writer who hasn’t published a book in 40 years. Harris Shaw (Michael Caine) was once one of the most revered and fascinating writers on the planet. Now, decades on from his landmark bestseller, he’s become a drunken recluse. Nevertheless, he has a contract and a book advance to meet and coincidentally, he’s actually just completed a new book.

With Harris’s J.D Salinger level of fascination and fame, Lucy sees big money in a new Harris Shaw book but his contract has strings attached. Most notably, Harris has the final cut on his book edit. Under his contract, not a single word can be changed by Lucy and she’s not allowed to edit the book in any way. On the other hand, Harris is required to publicize the book on a book tour so Lucy appears to, at the very least, have a potential sales bonanza, regardless of whether the book is good or not.

You can probably guess then that the book tour is problematic. Harris requires that he be given a bottle of Johnny Walker at every stop and he refuses to actually read from the book, a tradition of any conventional book tour. Instead, at the book launch, Harris assaults the critic from the New York Times, played in a foppish and entirely unnecessary cameo by Cary Elwes. This causes many bookstores to cancel Harris’ appearances.

The places that are willing to have Harris are college dive bars where drunken youngsters cheer as Harris refuses to read from his book and, in one particularly notable stop, Harris tosses his new book on the floor and urinates on it as camera phones capture the scene. The only seemingly helpful instance occurs when Harris’s favorite curse word, ‘Bull****e, goes viral and becomes a rallying cry. It doesn’t help sell books but it makes him internet famous.

You can probably guess where all of this is heading. First time director Lina Roessler falls into many of the traps of this kind of conventional comedy and the movie bogs down into familiar beats. Aubrey Plaza does what she can to elevate the material but, as I mentioned, she appears constrained by this character who is very much a subject of the plot rather than driving the plot. There are moments of grace and humor but the movie tends toward schmaltz as the end approaches and here we find something that Aubrey Plaza isn’t great at, being touchy feely.

As for Michael Caine, this paycheck portion of his career is quite boring. Most recently he was in an abysmal Gen Z take on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the modern take called Twist. Now, he’s playing every single cliched beat of a drunk character. There are many ways to play drunk on screen and here Caine has chosen the least interesting version. This is a role that needs someone like Peter O’Toole to bring it to life. This late period Michael Caine is not up to this kind of challenge.

Best Sellers isn’t a terrible movie, I doubt the combination of Aubrey Plaza and Michael Caine could make something completely unwatchable. That said, this is certainly far from the best from either actor. Plaza has never been more conventional and Caine has never before been so boring. It’s a shame because he’s given a lot to work with in this role. It’s part J.D Salinger and part Peter O’Toole with a big dramatic backstory. He had plenty to work with and somehow appears disinterested.

Best Sellers is available for streaming rental as of September 17th, 2021.