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One of storytelling's most overworked clichés — the great artist as insufferable human being — gets a full workout in "Genius," a labored true-life drama that is someone's bad idea for Oscar bait.
The story begins in 1929 with the meeting of unpublished author Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) and Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth), the venerated book editor at the publishing house Scribner's. Wolfe is rejected by all but his lover, the emotionally fragile set designer Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman), but Perkins sees beauty in his writing and signs him to a publishing contract. The two whittle down the work to a manageable length, to become the best-selling "Look Homeward, Angel," before Wolfe brings his second manuscript in crates.
Veteran screenwriter John Logan ("Gladiator," "Hugo") adapts A. Scott Berg's biography of Perkins into a two-hander, pitting the self-aggrandizing, hard-drinking Wolfe against Perkins, the sedate family man. In the hands of Michael Grandage, a veteran British theater director making his movie debut, the whole affair succumbs to period-piece sepia tones and an air of stuffy saintliness, with glorified cameos by Perkins' author pals F. Scott Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce) and Ernest Hemingway (Dominic West).
Grandage also can't reconcile the juxtaposition of acting tones, with Law's hammy Carolina accent bounding around while Firth's strained gentility nearly never lets him take off his fedora.
'Genius'
Opens Friday, June 17, at Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and suggestive comment; 104 minutes.