Macaulay Culkin's 'Junior': Spinning out of control

Remember the sequences in the Home Alone movies when Macaulay Culkin's Kevin would put random odds and ends together, set them in motion, and fool people who were outside into believing that something was actually going on inside? Culkin's publisher has apparently taken a page from little Kevin, judging by the way Miramax Books' marketing team took a few not-so-mean words out of EW's otherwise unflattering review of his autobiographical novel Junior and cobbled them together into a glowing blurb in a full-page ad that ran in Friday's New York Times.

''Well-written...complicated...a guilty pleasure'' is how the ad excerpted Margeaux Watson's C- review. Miramax Books told EW that the blurb is ''in context.'' Hmm, let's see:

''If you have a jones to find out how 'Junior' feels about his estranged father, coming of age as a former child star, outgrowing his boyish cuteness, his failed relationships, or his more recent romance with a sitcom star, it's all here in short, often well-written bursts.”

''It would have been easy for me to slap a big fat F at the bottom of this review and be done with it. But grading actor-turned-author Macaulay Culkin's first book is far more complicated.''

''Although Junior contains enough morbid moments to qualify as a guilty pleasure, you'll ultimately feel cheated by its lack of cohesion.''

Let's give Miramax Books an A for creativity. If only the book had been as imaginatively put together.

[And Miramax: Don't go trying to blurb this item. (I can see it now: "A for creativity!") We're on to your game, and the C- stands.]