Meryl Streep grows up - ‘It’s Complicated’ Review

Posted on January 17, 2010 - 7:36pm by michael It’s Complicated is one of the rarest kinds of romantic comedies. It’s well-written, it doesn’t grasp for cheap laughs, and it’s not centered around some manufactured rom-com set-up designed to provide talentless screen-writers with a conveyor belt across which to issue some weak slapstick comedy (see Leap Year and Did You Hear About the Morgans? Sorry, they were both awful). The title doesn’t even really refer so much to some love triangle described in the movie, it refers to everyone – to all of us. The movie isn’t just about the characters in the film, it’s about life. And what else would you expect from Meryl Streep? She’s one of our classiest and most talented actors working today. I expected that if she were appearing in a romantic comedy, it would either be a very well-developed story, or it would be a standard romantic comedy and she would somehow lift the material to a level that it otherwise wouldn’t have reached, and amazingly enough, both are true. Streep plays Jane, a divorced mother with three grown kids. Her husband Jake (Alec Baldwin), a wealthy attorney, has left her for Agness, a hot brunette half his age. They popped out a kid and are in the middle of clinical efforts to have another one. Jane is a successful restaurant owner and so is perfectly able to support herself financially, and while her kids continue to accept the divorce of their parents, she deals with her emotions by fulfilling her dream to have a custom-designed kitchen added on to her house. Her architect Adam (Steve Martin) designs the thing with such precision that it’s almost like he can read her thoughts. She’s impressed, he’s divorced, and my predictability radar is beeping like crazy. But then the movie remembers its title and shows that it understands that life is, in fact, complicated. Much more complicated than a Hollywood script. We want to see Jane get together with Adam because he’s the perfect match for her. Both are struggling to get over ugly divorces, he’s a genuinely sweet man, and we want to see her kick Jake to the curb. But when she starts having an  affair with Jake it changes everything. Sex does that, I’ve heard. Should we be happy to see them together because, even though he’s cheating on Agness, it seems to make the two of them happier than they’ve been together in a decade? Do we want to see Adam get his heart broken again, if it means we also get to see Jake get rid of his bitch wife? These are questions about the real lives of real people, and the movie understands how difficult they are to answer. Writer and director Nancy Meyers, a veteran filmmaker who’s been making movies for half a century, understands her craft. Rather than giving us clunky scenes generated to cynically manipulate our emotions, she knows how to get us to understand what’s happening in the lives of her characters. There’s a scene where Jane and the kids are getting ready for a big family dinner, and Jake is over at the house. He wants to stay because this is his family and they’re all having some good family time, but his hot, young wife keeps calling him and being all needy. It seems she’s “ovulating” and needs him for another cold, passionless conception effort. He pauses on his way out the door, looking back at his ex-wife sitting down to dinner with their children. He has not only broken up a loving family in favor of some hot brunette, he’s lost his place at the table. This may be the exact moment when he learns how much less important sex is than everything else. There’s also a scene where Adam and Jane smoke pot together, another sign of how well-made the movie is, in my opinion. Drug scenes are one of my all-time least favorite movie scenes (along with dream-sequences, which are generally saturated with so much cheesy, forced symbolism that I find them intolerable to sit through), but the stoned scenes in this movie are some of the best I’ve seen. They don’t glorify drugs and they don’t grasp for cheap laughs. They’re presented as they might be of real people doing something they haven’t done in decades, and it’s nearly impossible not to have a good time along with them. And that means a lot coming from someone like me. Pot does nothing for me. And the performances! I won’t say any more about Meryl Streep, she’s brilliant as always. Mamma Mia is the only movie I can remember with her that I genuinely didn’t like, and still she was great in it. Steve Martin gives a wonderful, subdued performance, and Alec Baldwin seems to enjoy and feed off of how well he fits into his role. It’s self-deprecating, and he loves it. Also worth mentioning is John Krasinski as Jake and Jane’s oldest son and owner of the funniest scenes in the movie. He’s best known for his work on “The Office,” but his hilarious performance here definitely should not be overlooked. The movie is smart, realistic and classy, but still has plenty of good laughs. Highly recommended! The Bean Meter