It's Complicated (2009)

I have talked to friends who are at least a decade older than me who have said that IT'S COMPLICATED is far deeper and "important" that it appears on the surface. I don't really see it that way. To me, IT'S COMPLICATED isn't complicated at all. But it was fun, and on the day that I saw it, that was all I was looking for.

The great Meryl Streep (certainly one of the four heads if ever a Mount Rushmore for actors is ever erected) plays a divorced middle-aged woman who has nothing juicy to contribute to her regular girls-night-in meetings with her three friends until she allows herself to get swept up in an affair with her now-remarried ex-husband. Keeping their rekindled relationship a secret from her three grown kids, only her oldest daughter's fiancee figures out what is going on, and he is too stunned to report it. To complicate the picture, Streep's Jane was just about to get something going with another divorcee, a charming and sensitive architect. Jane quickly goes from boring middle-aged woman to shady lady, and the results are hilarious.

People who hate Meryl Streep must do so because they are uncomfortable with her formidable talent. Yes, it's not cool to love people who are too popular. But at some point, and I hate to say this, maybe the majority is right. I dare you to watch IT'S COMPLICATED and not be totally overwhelmed with joy in watching Streep work. She is funnier here than in any comedy she's done before, more bubbly than even her work in "Mamma Mia!" She's a pleasure to watch.

Equally a pleasure are both Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, actors who are not everyone's cup of tea. I know plenty of people who are annoyed by one or both of these actors, but they are both spot-on here: Baldwin as the daring charmer and Martin as the put-upon nice guy. While Streep is steering the ship here, IT'S COMPLICATED is doubly-blessed with the talents of these two co-stars.

As for the film? Eh. It's fun. It's good. It's not great. IT'S COMPLICATED certainly continues Streep's streak of being the best thing about every movie she's in. She hasn't been in a true masterpiece, one could argue, since "Sophie's Choice."

Director Nancy Meyers is worthy of credit when it comes to knowing how to tap in to the feelings of women, and there's not enough of that being done realistically in Hollywood. Meyers wrote "Private Benjamin" and "Baby Boom" and wrote and directed "What Women Want" and "Something's Gotta Give." She's an important, if somewhat fluffy, voice in modern film. There's a lot of truth and a ton of relatability in what she does, and it's her style to go for the laugh when she does it.

And yet, I can't say that Meyers has hit one out of the park yet. There is too much that is conventional about each of her films, and that's true of IT'S COMPLICATED, too. There's not much that you haven't seen before. Even the HIGH-larious penultimate scene here involving a naked Baldwin seems calculated as a repeat of the naked Diane Keaton scene in "Something's Gotta Give" that worked so well for that film and brought so much attention to it. I hope Meyers has higher aspirations than simply being the director who can get middle-aged actors to drop trou. More realistically, though, she's an "if it ain't broke" type of writer and director who doesn't seem interested in stretching herself and trying anything new.

That makes IT'S COMPLICATED cinematic comfort food. Fortunately for Meyers, the film's release is well-timed for such a nugget. Most releases in theatres right now are films about the end of the world, war and rape. The comedies, like "Leap Year," are dreadfully written and unlaughable. So when you take a perfectly well-written, if not entirely new, story like this one, you have yourself a winner. You don't feel guilty laughing with IT'S COMPLICATED because the dialogue is sharp, the story is smart, and the acting is great.

But complicated? Not so much.

3.0 out of 4