On a very rare occasion there comes a romantic comedy that transcends convention and cliche and works at creating something truly inspired. This is not such an occasion. Writer/director Nancy Meyers' phony and self-congratulatory script and her film school-level direction are only tolerated because by some force of good or evil she was able to secure the powers of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton.
An opening sequence of beautiful women prowling the city streets with a hip-hop soundtrack thumping the count of their footfalls indicates to us that this is a film about a player who is going to learn some lessons about how he should treat women when he finally meets the love of his life. My early guess was correct, but this player is in his mid-60's, and there's the twist, ladies and gentlemen. The film must be spunky and original because it's about a silver fox.
Jack Nicholson is Harry Sanborn, the producer of a major hip-hop label and a man with a taste for the younger ladies. We know him to be a smarmy man because he wears Ray Bans, smokes cigars, drives a convertible and uses a cellphone. Old people don't use cellphones, apparently. His latest girlfriend--who looks as though she is newly out of braces--brings Harry to her summer home for a weekend of frolicking, though this is cut short a very inconvenient heart attack.
Not allowed to travel and not willing to stay in a hospital, Harry is left in the care of his girlfriend's mother, Erica (Keaton), put up in the summer home until he recovers. But wait a minute! Erica is high strung, demanding, easily flustered and not at all open to the idea of changing her well worn routine. Surely, having Harry live with her will bring nothing but hilarious hijinks, right? And so it does. Gag.
Somewhere amidst the picnic made memorable by a thunderstorm, a pancake party in pajamas, and kiss on a snow covered bridge in Paris, we are supposed to learn lessons about the nature of love. Love is blind, ageless, opposites attract, et cetera, so on and so forth.This isn't a particularly funny film and all of the humor was so contrived that I couldn't laugh even if I intellectually knew it to be humorous. Meyers worked so hard to fashion a "kooky" script that she bludgeoned all of the humor right out of it.
Thank God for Nicholson and especially for Keaton. Jack gives an atypical Nicholson performance which is more subdued with an easy, natural charm to it that made him likable in spite of his Ray Bans. Keaton shines brightly doing her part the way that only she could do. It's funny that some forty years later you can still traces of Annie Hall in what she does. The two actors elevate clumsy writing and make up for Meyers's lack of skills with their own considerable abilities. It's so nice to see two consummate professions just have fun with one another every once in a while. Keanu Reeves also has a nice role as the third point on a very strange love triangle which emerges.
I think the reason I disliked the film as much as I did was that it made me feel as though I was stupid. This is an easy film; it offers nothing revelatory at all whatsoever, and yet Meyers felt it necessary to explain to the audience what was going on as it was happening. Love scenes aren't love scenes if you have to dictate what it is you like about someone else, as if affirming your statement of love. There is no need to describe a character within the lines when the audience can just look and see for themselves--especially when you're both writer and director.
To bring my argument to a close I will leave you with one final point. The character of Erica is a playwright. After a long bout of writer's block she decides to write the story of her and Harry's romance, using the inevitable breakup as her emotional fuel. In the play she writes scenes that we have witnessed already and uses lines that we have already heard. In essence, she only changes the names. When she finishes writing the play, Reeves's character says to her that it's the best thing that Erica has ever done. He tells her it's funny, it's smart, it's emotional. How dare Meyer's write about herself in that way? For shame, I say (especially when her story is neither funny nor smart).
1.5/4
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