Overall Rating
  Awesome: 14%
Worth A Look: 27%
Average: 34%
Pretty Bad: 17%
Total Crap: 8%
6 reviews, 64 user ratings
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| Something's Gotta Give |
by Natasha Theobald
"Writer-director, edit thyself!"
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This movie is much like its middle to late life characters; it starts to lose steam and focus halfway through the job at hand. It could have been sharper and fresher with a couple of scenes cut out here and there. As it is, the story begins to wander off into selective senility, forgetting the point of the whole affair. At more than two hours, this romantic comedy limps rather than banging it home.Diane Keaton stars as Erica, a playwright and mother to Amanda Peet's Marin. When Marin chooses to spend the weekend at mom's house in the Hamptons with her mature boyfriend and bonafide bachelor, Harry (Jack Nicholson) as do mom and her sister, Zoe (a criminally underused Frances McDormand), chaos ensues. Erica is a bit of a prickly pear post her divorce as it is, and Harry seems to push all of the wrong buttons, making snide remarks about women her age, etc. When Harry has a pre-coital heart attack, the dinner party group moves to the hospital, where we meet Harry's doctor, Julian (Keanu Reeves), a younger man love interest for Erica. It turns out that Harry must stay on at the house with Erica until he is well enough to travel back to the city. This gives them the opportunity to get to know one another a little better and gives excuses for house calls from sexy doctor Keanu.
The set up is pretty good and often funny, though with scenes you would have seen while they were selling the movie. Much of the humor is at the expense of the aged, which seems okay since the middle aged actors are the ones responsible for delivering it. There also are some barbs aimed at the myth of Jack Nicholson himself - clever the first time, less so as the joke wears on. All of the actors do a good job, notably Diane Keaton, who takes a cynical, obsessive woman and makes believable an opening of her heart to love. I also enjoyed Keanu Reeves in his part, though some of it, for the sake of the picture, could have hit the cutting room floor. I imagine more than one fifty something woman swooned at the thought of his sexy doctor saying the things to her that he says to Erica. I would have seen a film about that relationship front and center, for sure.
The romance is good at points and a little sticky at points. We spend a lot of time walking along beaches and talking about our feelings. Funny, I don't much like to "talk about the relationship" at home, so why would I want to hear other people complain and cajole onscreen? There are some genuinely tender moments, though, some touching times hard won. Some of the romantic stuff, however, devolves into silliness and predictability. The path becomes pretty clear, surprises are undermined by earlier, unnecessary scenes, and too much time is taken getting from point A to denouement. The winning aspects of the characters and great performances are undermined somewhat by the administration, writer-director Nancy Meyers. While I liked this better than her last effort, "What Women Want," I still see some lack of directorial focus in making the finished product fit. Things seem to go better when she writes, but writing and directing leaves too much opportunity to keep beloved scenes that should really go.All in all, the characters and actors save the hiccups in the story points from being too much of a problem. While I got frustrated with the meandering plotline, I continued to enjoy the performances and found myself mostly happy to have seen the best parts of the film.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8384&reviewer=317
originally posted: 06/08/04 09:47:16
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USA
12-Dec-2003 (PG-13)
DVD: 30-Mar-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
08-Jan-2004
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