She’s done it again. At sixty-one and amidst a rare flock of appealing movies,
Meryl Streep sold out theaters on Christmas weekend with the new comedy “It’s
Complicated.” With a hefty assist from Alec Baldwin who plays her ex, she
strides across the screen looking great, reveling in the role, and lifting the
movie beyond its actual value. How come the success?
For one
thing, Nancy Meyers’ script is, as they say now, age-appropriate. Jane (Streep)
and Jake (Baldwin) had been married for sixteen years before getting a divorce
ten years ago. They meet again in New York City during the college graduation of
their son Luke. Jake is now married to Agness (yes, double S), the trophy cliché
who embodies all the problems of age disparity. They are not happy. The very
sight of the former wife he once loved alongside his three fine adult children
sends Jake into a black hole of longing. He will unload Agness and retrieve his
family. Covering his options, he seduces Jane.
Because her
actors are well into upper middle age and comfortable with it, Nancy Meyers has
loaded her script with one liners about aging – “Don’t look, Jake, turn around;
it all looks different when you’re lying down.” Alec Baldwin plays Jake as a
big, awkward old whale of a man, perfectly content to erase his ego for this
part. Meryl Streep’s expressive face is a great rejoinder to women who erase
expression with plastic surgery. The supporting cast does a fine job,
particularly John Krasinski as the fiancé about to enter the family. He rises to
the comic occasion when he blunders into knowledge of the affair and must keep
it to himself.
“All the
things that tore us apart aren’t issues any more; they went away,” Jake intones.
The movie posits that in such a time frame the troublesome details, tight
schedules and demanding overload of the early years have evaporated. What better
than to get remarried at 60? But there might be something better than stepping
backward - Adam (Steve Martin), perhaps? He is the architect lurking at the
edges of Jane’s marital melodrama. He is as calm and quiet as Jake is explosive.
Credit Steve Martin here with playing it straight and leaving the mugging to
Streep and Baldwin. He is welcome counterpoint to an excess of on-screen
giggling. The movie opens with a prolonged scene of Jane’s friends indulging in
an adolescent group chat. These women are just plain silly.
So what’s
afoot here? From the laughter that rolls through the audience, it would seem
there is a collective familiarity with the problems that accrue in middle-age
marriage. It’s a been there, done that experience for anyone who recognizes the
inevitable elements. Is anything more liberating than being old enough to
recognize the humor in marriage problems? This movie promises that a rollicking
perspective, on ourselves or others, can mean the end of anxiety. It is a huge
audience hit.
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