The Muse is yet another comic gem from Albert Brooks, who wrote and directed the movie and plays the lead. Brooks is a true artist. His understated form of humor is perfectly timed and balanced, and he understands how to be funny with and through the story and what he wants to say. Lesser comedies have story, humor, and message sort of crammed together in an awkward heterogenous blend; worse comedies have the last of the three overemphasized to painful extremes. The Muse has none of these faults. Although The Muse is not Brooks' greatest work -- Mother and Defending Your Life, for example, are superior -- it is endlessly creative, consistently amusing, and occasionally hilarious.