A certain segment of the reading population simply shouldn't see The End of the Tour: David Foster Wallace diehards, the ones who've read Infinite Jest not just once but several times, who've internalized those famously complex sentences, and who've waded through that final, unfinished novel about tax codes. When a writer means as much to you as Wallace means to so many, you really don't need to see him impersonated on-screen by that dude whose dick you saw in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

For the rest of us, though—the more moderate fans who marvel at Wallace's essays and short stories, even as our copies of Infinite Jest remain permanently dog-eared at page 281—there's much to appreciate about The End of the Tour.

This is a movie about two writers navigating the strange power dynamic that comes when one person is charged with representing another on the page—a dynamic that's further complicated when the profilee is orders of magnitude smarter and more talented than the profiler, and both of them know it. So it's worthwhile—if you can—to untangle the real David Foster Wallace from this cinematic one and instead appreciate The End of the Tour as a case study of ambition and ego. It's also understandable why many Wallace fans just won't want to. by Alison Hallett