Can an ambitious young woman find redemption through an elderly, reclusive writer? Proving that there is nothing new under the sun, Canadian actress/director Lina Roessler’s feature debut is the second film this year (after My Salinger Year) to explore this not particularly novel premise.

The ancient scribbler in this case is not J.D. Salinger but an alcoholic, decrepit, Harris Shaw (an amusing Michael Caine), whose seminal debut novel, Atomic Autumn, put his publisher on the map. But it has been decades since the literary world has heard from Shaw. Is he even still alive?

Lucy Stanbridge (a hard-working Plaza) is anxious to find out. The publishing company she inherited from her father is in financial trouble. Sales of her YA novel have tanked, thanks to negative reviews from teen BookTubers, and rival publisher Jack Sinclair (an oily Scott Speedman) wants to buy her out in a familiar You’ve Got Mail angle.

“Everyone else is dead or unaffordable,” notes Lucy’s loyal assistant, Rachel (Eileen Wong), after scanning the company’s roster of authors in the desperate hope of finding a potential best seller. But an old contract pulled from the archives reveals that Shaw still owes his publisher a second book.

An initial meeting with the cantankerous hermit ends abruptly when Harris pulls a shotgun on the two young women. But in need of funds (he’s seen burning a foreclosure notice), the octogenarian eventually relents and drops a manuscript on Lucy’s desk. “Your pound of flesh,” Harris says contemptuously.

Unfortunately for Harris, his contract requires him to promote his new novel by going on a book tour. If he refuses, Lucy has the right to edit the novel. “I’ll be damned if I let the incompetent hand of nepotism molest my words, Silver Spoon,” Harris angrily retorts.

Things don’t run smoothly from the start, as the irascible and often drunk author torments his nervous publisher by urinating on the new book, reading from Penthouse letters instead of the novel at a book reading, assaulting a New York Times book critic (a flamboyant Cary Elwes), and repeatedly shouting “bullshite” at various other events. Paul Leonard-Morgan’s jaunty score attempts to remind viewers that this film is a comedy, but after a while Harris’s bad boy stunts become tedious.

As this mismatched pair continue their tumultuous road trip, staying at colorfully seedy motels with heart-shaped bathtubs that would be popular with hipsters, it’s easy to see where Anthony Greico’s script is taking the audience. While the screenwriter offers some amusing jabs at the internet and millennial culture (Harris’s “bullshite” becomes a Twitter and YouTube meme, and audience members are more interested in buying souvenir T-shirts than books), he undercuts his satire with plot contrivances and sentimental melodramatic revelations.

Like My Salinger Year, Best Sellers was filmed in Canada, and it shows, despite the best efforts of production designer Mario Hervieux to dress up Montreal as New York City. Lucy’s lovely wood-paneled, book-lined publisher’s office is a typical Hollywood fantasy, and does anyone besides Lucy and Rachel work there? Where are the other editors? Where is the marketing and sales staff?

Despite the best efforts of Caine and Plaza (with an assist from a scene-stealing cat) to overcome a weak script, this lackluster film will not be a best seller.