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SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE

You probably know what this film is about from the barrage of advertising for it. Older woman (Diane Keaton, Annie Hall, The First Wives Club) meets older man (Jack Nicholson, The Shining, As Good As It Gets) who is dating her daughter, but he falls for Diane’s character, Erica. As we first meet Jack’s character, Harry, he is questioned as to why he chooses not to date women over 30. He responds that it is not his choice, saying “Women of a certain age don’t date me.” At this point we know he’s in for a bit of a romp. In essence, this is a permutation of your basic cosmopolitan romantic comedy that Hollywood has been churning out successfully, well, ever since there’s been a Hollywood.

Writer-director Nancy Meyers’s (What Women Want, The Parent Trap) decidedly New York, sophisticated style lends a certain charm that is reminiscent of 1930s depression-escapist comedies such as Dinner at Eight, as she populates her film (you can order the film essay from https://mcessay.com/ service) with playwrights, successful business entrepreneurs, art auctioneers from Christies, and doctors. It’s funny for sure, and the gentle attack on ageism toward women is long overdue. Especially by an industry that visually perpetuates it.

Nicholson and Keaton are brilliant as they battle against these sterotypes. They each have the ability to subtly create an emotion though physical movement or facial gestures, which for an actor can be so much more important than remembering your lines. And they both know how to clown for a smart comedy too. Keanu Reeves (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Matrix Revolutions), on the other hand, has not mastered the physical part of his acting, which explains why he is so acceptable in roles such as Neo because the wordless scenes are painstakingly choreographed for him. I must admit that I seriously thought he would be more believable as the savior of all humankind than as a doctor, but he actually pulled it off, since his stiff introversion fits a doctor’s manner. He also plays well against.

Nicholson’s brassy playboy, creating a dynamic for Keaton as she chooses between the two. Amanda Peet (The Whole Nine Yards, Saving Silverberg) holds her own as Keaton’s daughter and Nicholson’s original love interest, which is no small task with this cast. And Frances McDormand (Fargo, Almost Famous) is simply not in this movie enough, but still manages to steal every scene she’s in.

However, I found a few elements lacking, especially in the visual department. Nancy Meyers is a wordsmith for sure and her dialog is superb, but she leans too heavily on language, forgetting that film is first a visual medium. Erica’s house in the Hamptons looks like something out of an Ethan Allen catalog. You could argue that the stylized, unreal quality calls back to such films from Hollywood’s golden era, but it is ultimately just boring. She could have used the visual space to add depth to her characters, as done to glorious effect by director Griffin Dunne and set designer Clair Jenora Bowen in Practical Magic. They created a Maine Victorian that is a wordless character which tells the history of the family who lives there.

Using the visual space more may have also aided the other issue I had with the film, which was the editing. It seems Meyer’s had too many lines and situations that she couldn’t bring herself to kill, and their inclusion drags the film down from about the middle point on and doesn’t really add anything that we didn’t already know. At this point, she also suddenly wants to do more than just update this genre, but change it, and trick the audience into thinking that we don’t know how it will end. She sends us down alleys and backstreets, which is much like life, but it doesn’t work in a film that for the last hour has promised to make Hollywood sense. I applaud her attempts to update the genre, but after more than 70 years, it is so well understood that an audience will simply turn against a film if it doesn’t deliver what is expected.

Ultimately it seems that Hollywood and, in particular, women director’s such as Meyers, along with Nora Ephron (You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle), and Penny Marshall (A League of Their Own, Riding in Cars with Boys), are trying to modernize what has been inherently sexist and ageist all along, the romantic comedy. It is, after all, little more than a cinematic codification of the fairy tale. The prince rides in on his white horse and wakes the princess from her hundred years of sleep. It may just be that if women directors and writers want to truly express modern love, they will need to find a new way of doing it. This said, it is also important to realize how hard it is for women to get behind the camera, and, that if you’re not making an independent film, your ending and your story will be forced to remain within certain constructs. The fact that Meyers made a very funny movie, filled with A-list actors, and managed to get it supported and marketed extremely well by a major studio is no small accomplishment.