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Film Review: It’s Complicated
Divorced From Reality… With Benefits
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“Why does everything have to be so complicated?” So asketh, pugnacious, Canadian poetess, Avril Lavigne. Indeed, certain aspects of life do seem more complex than they need to be: the Electoral College, health care reform, Tiger Woods’cell phone records, etc. However It’s Complicated, writer/director Nancy Meyers’ romantic comedy for horn-ball Baby Boomers, is as complex as a peanut butter cup and brings few intricacies to the silver haired screen, beyond a bevy of belly laughs courtesy of the always entertaining and even more bovine than usual Alec Baldwin.
Aiding and abetting in the picture’s pursuit of horniness are giddy geezers Meryl Streep, as Jane, a divorcee, successful bakery owner, and mother to three grown kids, whose unexpected affair with ex-hubby Jake (Baldwin) adds a new wrinkle to her already creased visage. An exhausted looking Steve Martin also stars as Adam, the architect Jane hires to renovate her Santa Barbara kitchen that already looks like a Williams – Sonoma catalogue come to life. When newly divorced Adam and Jane’s relationship moves from the drawing board to the dating pool, he becomes the third vortex in the film’s Flomax fuelled love triangle.
One obvious difficulty is having to watch giddy geezers romp like horny flutists at their first band camp. Just because true love and lust know no mandatory retirement age doesn’t mean the AARP approved horizontal bopping should be performed in public. But tougher than enduring the lurid liver spots and awkward cuddling is feeling any sort of empathy for these gourmet lives turned, if not upside down, then slightly sideways.
Can Jane and Jake keep their torch re-lit or is it too late to move back home again? And can an aging architect find true amour in a suburban jungle populated by kinky cougars, debauched divorces and the occasional tattooed trophy wife? The uncomplicated response isn’t “What will become of them?’ but ‘Who cares?’”