If you are a Nancy Meyers fan the good news for you is that It’s Complicated will make you happy, but if you have issues with Nancy Meyers and her filmmaking style this one won’t sway you her way. It’s Complicated is pure Nancy Meyers for better or for worse. Meyers gives us another aging white, rich baby boomer woman at a crossroads in her life. Meryl Streep plays Jane Adler the owner of a spectacular bakery in Santa Barbara whose youngest has just graduated from college. On the trip to NYC to attend her son’s graduation she winds up in bed with her ex, Jake played with lusty hysterics by Alec Baldwin.
Jane becomes unmoored by this turn of events. She had become comfortable in her life. She has her friends, she has her kids, she has her work, she about to get a new HUGE addition put on her house that she’s been saving up for for years. But while she’s content, she’s not really happy and Jake, the guy who left her for a younger woman pushes all the right buttons and she becomes unglued.
What Meyers is able to do is to ask some questions about women’s roles, expectations and disappointments. She doesn’t challenge anything or put a political spin on it. She gives us a person who followed the blueprint of a woman of her race and class, married the guy, had three kids, took care of the family and then like so many other women like her, got left behind for a younger woman.
The thing that you need to be reminded of during this dance of Streep and Baldwin is just how bad the divorce was. And it’s the kids (now in their 20s) who are the ones not understanding this renewed friendship between their parents. These are the kids who clearly remember the times when their dad wasn’t allowed in the house. They are confused, and Zoe Kazan says say eloquently as Gabby, the middle child “I am very damaged from the divorce.”
So even though Jane has had 10 years to get over it, she still has residual anger. Who can blame her? But the thing is, she’s not the same person she was a decade before and doesn’t want to revert back to that woman and those habits which you can see is very easy to do.
Baldwin as Jake, sees Jane differently than he did when he left and also sees an independent, adult woman who’s not amped up on hormones wanting to have a baby. But Jane doesn’t let him off the hook and says, “isn’t a baby part of the package when you marry a woman her age?” Baldwin is great as a guy who just wants his life to be easy again. He feels he can ease back into Jane’s life and while he has changed (a bit) in their 10 years apart, she has grown exponentially and they clearly just “don’t fit” anymore.
Streep is able to show Jane’s confusion with the excitement over her personal sexual revolution with her ex-husband to her utter horror over the fact that she is the one having an affair with a married man. It’s the small gestures by Streep when she is alone that convey Jane’s emotions and nobody NOBODY does it better.
Steve Martin plays third prong in the love triangle and I have never seen him as retrained on screen. He plays a man who has been bitterly devastated in a divorce and is desperate to find some normalcy in his life. He likes Jane because she’s an adult and says that her age is one of the things that he finds attractive about her. (When is the last time you heard that in a movie?)
But there are a bunch of things that bothered me in the film. The tone deafness about the economy is a big one. It just kinds of seems in your face. Everything is white and plush, the people are all white and skinny and it just seems kind of off.
But then I need to remember that this is a Nancy Meyers film. She makes films for a certain type of woman. The thing is there are lots of baby boomer women out there who will wistfully look at this film and be able to relate to certain aspects of it. If enough of them go to see it, it will be a hit.
There was an interesting column by Tom O’Neil of the LA Times’ 
The Oscar hosts for next year’s broadcast have been set. After some speculation that it would be Steve Martin and Tina Fey who did a cute tag team as presenters last year, they have decided — not surprisingly — to go with two guys. Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. I like them both a lot but how come no Tina Fey? Is she too busy? The Oscars are supposed to be the “women’s super bowl” yet again, no female host. Baldwin and Martin are costarring in the Christmas release (with Meryl Streep) of It’s Complicated the new Nancy Meyers film.
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