In a sentenceMeryl Streep sleeps with her ex-husband and the only thing in the house that gets more attention is the kitchen
Ten years after her divorce, Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) is about to add a new kitchen to a house that does not obviously need one. Her ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin) left her for the much younger Agness (Lake Bell), with whom he is now trying for a baby. When the family gathers in New York for the graduation of their son Luke (Hunter Parrish), Jane and Jake end up alone at the hotel bar, drink too much, and go upstairs together. Back home, Jane confesses to her friends Joanne (Mary Kay Place) and Trisha (Rita Wilson), fends off Jake’s sudden enthusiasm, and takes a shine to Adam (Steve Martin), the divorced architect drawing her plans, while her daughter’s fiancé Harley (John Krasinski) tries to forget what he saw at the hotel.
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Nancy Meyers’s comedy about a divorcee who starts an affair with her own ex-husband has two leads in relaxed, generous form and a house nobody could afford. It is pleasant, far too long, and never once in doubt about where it is going.
Nancy Meyers has a way of putting wealthy, well-dressed people of a certain age in a large house and having them talk about love, and here she has found a new angle on it. This time the woman is Jane Adler (Meryl Streep), ten years divorced, and the man is her ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin), who left her for someone younger and now, drunk at a hotel bar in New York, finds he would rather have the original back. It’s Complicated is a pleasant, handsome comedy with two stars who plainly enjoy each other. It also runs 121 minutes on an idea that would have been better served by 95.
The reason to see it is Streep and Baldwin together. Baldwin plays Jake as a man astonished by his own good fortune, flopping across his ex-wife’s bed, eating her food and talking with his mouth full, and he is funniest when Jake is most pleased with himself. Streep plays Jane’s guilt as giggling. She laughs a great deal in this film, head back, hand to chest, and for an hour it is charming; then we noticed it, and once noticed it could not be un-noticed. Still, when the two of them are in a room the lines sound like people who were once married, with twenty years of grievance under the jokes, and Meyers has written them that way.
Steve Martin is cast as Adam, the architect drawing Jane’s new kitchen, and he has been asked to play a decent, slightly sad man who would be good for her. One of the funniest performers of his generation spends most of the film being sensible, and he does it gracefully, but it is like hiring a chef to make toast. John Krasinski has the better deal. His Harley, engaged to Jane’s daughter Lauren (Caitlin FitzGerald), sees something at the New York hotel he was not meant to see and spends the rest of the film trying to keep it off his face. He fails, deliberately and often, and his face got the two biggest laughs we gave the film.
John Toll shoots all of this in soft late-afternoon light, so that even the kitchen Jane wants to replace glows. Jon Hutman’s production design is the film’s third lead: a house of pale wood and open shelves and a vegetable garden, with a kitchen most restaurants would envy, and the plot asks us to accept that it is too small. Sonia Grande dresses Streep in cream and oatmeal, linen and loose cardigans, so she looks like something from the same catalogue as her worktops. Hans Zimmer and Heitor Pereira supply light acoustic guitar that tells us, every few minutes, that nothing will go badly wrong. Nothing does.
The trouble is the second hour. Meyers has one grown-up idea, that a woman might take her ex-husband back to bed on her own terms and discover she rather likes the power, and for about forty minutes she follows it. Then she loses her nerve and reaches for farce: sneaking about, near-discoveries, and long stretches in which the characters tell each other how complicated things are instead of doing anything about them. Lake Bell’s Agness, the younger wife, is written as a villain and dressed as one, and the film invites us to laugh at her in a way it would never allow for Jane. Joe Hutshing and David Moritz let scenes run on past their last joke, and the final half hour tries more than one ending before it settles.
Here is what we felt. We laughed out loud twice, both times at Krasinski. There is also a party scene, well into the second half, in which Streep and Martin finally get to be silly together, and for ten minutes the film is the one it should have been throughout: two clever people, slightly out of their depth, enjoying each other. And somewhere around the ninety-minute mark we caught ourselves looking at the house rather than the people in it, wondering what the worktops were made of. We do not think that is what Meyers intended.
The starting point here is sharper than most romantic comedies manage, and the film has less faith in it than it deserves. It is for a Sunday evening at home, with someone who has been through a divorce and come out the other side with a sense of humour. It runs 121 minutes and carries a 15 certificate, and you will see the ending coming from the hotel bar.
The reviews are split roughly down the middle, with mixed notices outnumbering either the warm or the hostile. Where the critics agree is on the cast: almost every review, kind or cold, praises Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, and most single out the ease between them as the reason the film works at all. John Krasinski and Steve Martin draw regular mentions too. The kinder notices call it a grown-up romantic comedy with a frisky farce streak and enjoy it on those terms.
The reservations cluster around the writing. Several critics find the film overlong and too tidy, the gags and emotional turns calculated and lacking bite, and the comfortable world of the characters far removed from anything real. The spread is wide, running from the low twenties to the eighties. Slant and Variety are the sharpest dissenters, finding the humour flat and the tone self-satisfied, while Radio Times and HeyUGuys are the most enthusiastic, finding it more entertaining than expected.
The critic calls the film a daffy, delectable comedy. They praise its blend of frisky French farce and middle-class American comedy.
Read the full review →Ebert viewed the film as a romantic comedy aimed at adults. He praised the appeal of its grown-up romantic setup.
Read the full review →Tobias finds the film overly tidy and too eager to retreat into crowd-pleasing humor, but says its cast carries it surprisingly far. He especially praises the relaxed chemistry between Streep and Baldwin, while criticizing the scene where Martin discovers the affair.
Read the full review →Bradshaw finds the comedy expertly assembled and unexpectedly fun, despite its indulgent world of wealthy characters. He particularly praises the believable chemistry between Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, while finding Streep’s laugh grating.
Read the full review →The page identifies this as a review, but the review text is hidden behind a registration prompt. Its verdict and any specific praise or complaint cannot be determined from the supplied text.
Read the full review →The available description frames the film as a comedy about older people having sex, but does not reveal the critic’s overall verdict. It singles out that subject as the film’s central message.
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Something's Gotta Give · not on Fi1m yetMeyers’s earlier late-love comedy, with Keaton and Nicholson, and more nerve than this one.
The Philadelphia StoryThe ex-husband who will not go away, done with speed, wit and Cary Grant.
Enough Said · not on Fi1m yetDivorced parents, a new romance, and jokes that come from how people actually talk.
Hope Springs · not on Fi1m yetStreep again, this time trying to save a marriage rather than revisit one.
Le Goût des autres · not on Fi1m yetFrench comedy of middle-aged longing, kinder and sharper about class than Meyers manages.
