We’ve seen far too many movies where a writer who is tapped dry creatively comes across a magical typewriter that either sparks some kind of new artistic juices or brings the writer’s creations to life. If you’ve never seen a story like that, “The Last Protagonist of Edward Dryden” will be a really interesting, fresh short film. Otherwise, it’s been done before.
Well-shot and thoroughly predictable, this film centers around Edward Dryden (Peter McHugh), a writer with no story ideas and a tight deadline. He finds the required magic typewriter and comes up with a great story involving Gavin (Rob Cairns, Jr.), who is dodging some people who want to kill him. As to be expected, Gavin actually ends up in Edward’s world and things go wrong from there.
For a movie as well made as this one, it should’ve had a more original story or some sort of twist that nobody could see coming. Instead, it follows all the paths stories of this sort have been taking for far too many decades. Of course, if you’ve isolated yourself from pop culture for the last fifty years, this may seem like a mind-blowing idea. That said, if you’ve isolated yourself there would be no reason to watch this in the first place, as it ultimately validates your isolation. The writer/director needs to come up with something more original next time, because there’s no doubt that if he does, he’ll do something that will be quite worthy of praise, people’s time and their hard-earned money.
