MY LUCKY STAR

A pair of comedy writers are lured to Hollywood, where their troubles swiftly swell to epic proportions in this catty, overplotted farce from the longtime writer/producer of Frasier.

Philip Cavanaugh and Claire Simmons both know Gilbert Selwyn too well (from Putting on the Ritz, 1991) to believe his golden tales of screenwriting glory. Despite his contacts—his mother is engaged to a powerful movie mogul—they can’t imagine how his spec script landed him the assignment of adapting the treacly WWII novel A Song for Greta. Swallowing their misgivings, though, they accept his airline tickets to the West Coast and soon learn the ludicrous reason action king Bobby Spellman thought Gilbert’s script was so great. By now, though, it’s too late to back out. Oscar-winning actress Diana Malenfant and her dishy son Stephen Donato are interested in starring in the Anne Frank-meets-summer-blockbuster adaptation; the buzz on the project has gone through the roof; and Philip is in love with Stephen, who he feverishly hopes is closeted rather than straight. The big-ticket stars have no intention of keeping a trio of amateur screenwriters on the project until Philip makes them an offer they can’t refuse: If he and his pals are allowed to write the script, he’ll hire himself out as ghostwriter to Diana’s sister Lily, a never-has-been actress trying to write a memoir whose nasty revelations Philip can leak to its prospective victims one day at a time. Philip’s triple role as screenwriter, ghostwriter and spy sets up numerous juicy complications, but Keenan isn’t content with them. He keeps playing out new subplots and upping the ante until the three musketeers are embroiled in an extortion plot and face charges of obstruction of justice and impersonating an LAPD officer.

Keenan freshens his obvious model, Noël Coward’s drawing-room farces, by restoring the gay sex Coward had to edit out.