It's Complicated (15)

Film

Romance

742.743.fi.complicated.01.jpg

Time Out rating:

<strong>Rating: </strong>3/5

User ratings:

<strong>Rating: </strong>3/5
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Time Out says

Tue Jan 5 2010

Older people have sex too! That’s the message of ‘It’s Complicated’, the second geronto-com from Nancy Meyers. While 2003’s ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ featured an angsty, flustered Diane Keaton and a womanising Jack Nicholson, this stars a slightly less angsty Meryl Streep, who is flustered by her encounter with serial womaniser Alec Baldwin.

The complication is that Jane (Streep) was married to Jake (Baldwin) – but he left her and their kids for other woman Agness (Lake Bell). Now Jake’s on a nostalgia trip, sweet-talking his independent ex into bed and a whole world of confusion. This may sound like unforgivably caddish behaviour, but script and actor conspire to make Jake an attractive proposition, with Baldwin’s charismatic arrogance and playful banter in full effect.

Baldwin has terrific chemistry with Streep: the pair seem to be having a genuinely hilarious time getting drunk and naked together – not that Jane will do that with the lights on. The script explores female insecurities and doesn’t shy away from the realities of middle-aged sex: Jake proudly displays his hairy beer belly on several occasions.

You could watch this pair run around having a slapstick secret affair for hours. Unfortunately, Steve Martin has to poke his head in as the Sensible Alternative, and he’s miscast. Martin is fine in comic scenes, but as a romantic possibility he’s unappealing. The inevitable conflict between the two men takes the film into more humdrum, sentimental territory, not helped by periodic appearances from Jane’s soppy grown-up children. Still, Streep is as enjoyable as ever, and if laughs count for anything, this is one of the better romantic comedies of the season.

Author: Anna Smith

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Release details

Rated:

15

UK release:

Fri Jan 8 2010

Duration:

115 mins

Cast and crew

Director:

Nancy Meyers

Screenwriter:

Nancy Meyers

Cast:

Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, John Krasinski, Steve Martin

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Comments & ratings

Rated as: 3/5 (13 ratings)

  • it looks good 3 very guo actors in it so and meryl always pulls it off so i think it will be a laugh

    yvonne field Wed Jan 6 2010
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  • Here's a precis of what I wrote in response to your 'Road to the Oscars' feature a while ago - I haven't changed my opinion, if anything time has only made the recollection of 'It's Complicated' more unpleasant: Wait 'til you see the appalling, unspeakably dreadful 'It's Complicated' ; between gasps of quiet revulsion at Steve Martin's over-surgeried piggy little eyes, at Alec Baldwin's queeny, purse-lipped non-performance (trying desperately to essay his 30-Rock schtick into a big-screen-filler and failing), just try and be entertained by Meryl Streep's game efforts to do anything other than her stock-in-trade tics (and also failing - because there's no script to speak of). You'll find yourself wondering why the hell we are supposed to give a flying fuck about preposterously well-heeled Santa Barbara types, all of them so white it hurts, their world, like that of '(500) Days of Summer' so heterosexual it beggars belief, living in sumptuous mansions; Streep moans that her kitchen's inadequate (she should see mine), picking her home-grown produce from a preposterous back garden that comes straight out of Munchkinland, complete with scarlet tomatoes the size of cantaloupes. You'll be hard put to explain why anyone let Meyers loose with a budget and a camera after the egregiously awful 'Something's Gotta Give' (the movie in which Frances McDormand, as a supposedly mature, intelligent & sophisticated professional woman, shrieks like a pre-pubescent schoolgirl over the sight of Jack Nicholson's sagging arse). Given the Streep/Baldwin/Martin presence, this waste of anyone's time will doubtless, despite my earlier prediction, feature highly in the Oscar jamboree (to be hosted, incidentally, by both Baldwin AND Martin... hmmm... ) but really, truly, this is one of the worst movies ever made, a wretched example of the sort of nadir the Industry is capable of reaching...

    Godfrey Hamilton Wed Jan 6 2010
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  • I don't know, I haven't seen it. It's probably OK. Or else it isn't.

    Richard Willis Tue Jan 5 2010
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