Alex & Emma on AllMovie

Rob Reiner directs Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson in Alex & Emma, a romantic comedy about an author and his secretary. Gangsters will kill Alex (Wilson) in 30 days if he doesn't pay back his gambling debts. The only way he can do that is to finish his new novel. He hires sassy court stenographer Emma (Hudson) to transcribe his dictation. The film intercuts between the two of them writing the story, and the story within the story. Hudson plays three roles in the film, and Wilson plays two. Sophie Marceau and David Paymer round out the cast. The premise is (very) loosely based on a series of events that befell Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.