This is the latest romantic comedy by Nancy Meyers (Actually it's not. Meryl Streep begins sleeping with her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin), then she meets another man (Steve Martin) and she decides to break things off with her ex- to be with this new guy. Simple. Sure, there are some layers thrown in -- Streep's kids are moving out and she's alone in the house for the first time, her ex- married the woman he was cheating on her with so now she's doing to her what the other woman did to her -- but for the most part it is frighteningly simple.
And for the most part it's pretty good. Not great, but decent.
There were a couple problems for me. One, the people don't talk like people. When you watch a Judd Apatow movie and the people are sitting around talking it sounds real. You believe in those people. Here, the dialog just never felt genuine. It gives everything a corny feel that makes it hard to get involved in the story. And the other problem was that it never felt like it was about anything. She fools around with her ex- -- fine and kind of funny (I actually had an idea using that idea too, which of course is now blown, dammit!) -- but so what? How many people haven't had a rebound booty call with an ex-? So what? A movie like WHEN HARRY MET SALLY is so good because it has something to say about love and friendship. This movie seems like it has more material to work with (divorce, getting over the ex-, the familiar vs the new, being with someone vs being alone, the thrill of an affair vs dating...not to mention the change in life when the kids are gone and you enter that next phase of your life) and yet Meyer's never seems to use it to say anything. Part of our engagement with a movie is about hope and fear -- what does your protagonist want, what do they fear, what are they trying to do, will they succeed or fail? -- and here there just aren't any strong answers to those questions, which leaves the movie feeling flat. Which is strange -- a movie about love and sex that actually has so little passion.
It isn't a bad movie. It's a nice movie. A pleasant movie. But it's also not great.
SLIGHT RECOMMEND
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