What happened to Rob Reiner as a director?

Cafe Society
1

I heard quite a bit about how M. Night Shyamalan experienced a dramatic decline in his movie-making skills and it actually is quite true. However, he has managed to occasionally direct and write some better movies, including Split and Trap(I though Trap was fun).

I don’t hear as much about Rob Reiner, though. Here are some of the earliest movies he directed:

Stand by Me
Princess Bride
Spinal Tap
When Harry Met Sally
Misery
A Few Good Men

Now, following those, he made North. North was very widely panned and is probably famous for Roger Ebert’s “hate hate hated” movie review. I’ve never seen it, but it must be at least somewhat bad to receive the hate it got.

Not being defeated, he made American President and Ghosts of the Mississippi, both that did fairly well, if not up to his earlier movies standard.

Then? Oh my. He declined so much. Here are his last movies.

Alex and Emma
Rumor Has it…
Bucket List <–this did, at least, coin this term
Flipped
Magic of Belle Isle
And So It Goes
Being Charlie
LBJ
Shock and Awe
God & Country

I’m going to put this out there. I’ve barely heard of some of those, let alone seen them.

He still gets work. I heard he has filmed Spinal Tap 2, which is certainly an interesting idea that will get a lot of people watching.

Did he just decline? Get lazy? Has anyone seen some of these later movies and thought they were good?

I mean, from Spinal Tap - A Few Good Men, he really had as good a start as Spielberg, if not more consistent early on.

2

Here’s an article about this:

His take is that Rob became more involved in political activism and non-film projects, and family, and just kept the directing as a way to pay the bills.

Another articles indicates he’s had a lifelong struggle with depression, and that (plus medicines) might be a factor.

3

But he didn’t have any writing credits on those, did he? Oscar-caliber talent did, right? You’re saying that, when he was directing stuff written by someone else — William frickin’ Goldman adapting a work by Stephen frickin’ King, say — his directing didn’t slip up; and, when he was directing stuff written by, say, Jeremy Leven or Joey Hartstone, his directing didn’t elevate it.

You could pretty easily argue that Aaron Sorkin’s writing was the key to A Few Good Men and The American President, and that Rob Reiner didn’t hurt either project; and you could argue that Lewis Colick’s writing has prompted people to say “who the heck is Lewis Colick?”

4

Is it really direction that makes the top of that list better than the bottom? I might be wrong, but I suspect there are two kinds of directors: Holistic directors who seek out or initiate their own projects, and directors-for-hire who just pick from those scripts submitted to them. I think Rob Reiner is likely the latter. When he was on a streak everybody wanted him to direct their films. After a few flops those really good scripts got sent to the newest up-and-comer.

5

He did share writing credits on This Is Spinal Tap, but that wasn’t a conventionally-scripted film.