Overall Rating
  Awesome: 14.29%
Worth A Look: 25.71%
Average: 35.24%
Pretty Bad: 17.14%
Total Crap: 7.62%
6 reviews, 69 user ratings
|
|
| Something's Gotta Give |
by Erik Childress
"Nancy Meyers Does It Again. And That's Nothing To Praise."
|
Hearing in a trailer that I’ve just witnessed a preview for “a film by Nancy Meyers” ranks pretty high on the cinematic kiss-of-death scale for me. She, along with former partner Charles Shyer, laid waste to the genre of comedy with their sophisticated light touch (aka: not funny) dating back to Private Benjamin and onto films like Baby Boom and remakes of Father of the Bride and The Parent Trap. Try and argue with me that What Women Want wasn’t a wasted premise trapped within an awful execution. Meyers’ signature humor-mildness with a feminist slant seeps from the ads for her latest film and the best compliment I can give it is that it really isn’t too bad. To say the worst thing about it, Meyers makes you sit through nearly two hours to discover it.After laying his image to waste with his bravura turn in last year’s About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson is back in his comfort zone playing a character who is less than 1% removed from his public image. Harry Sanborn is a hip-hop record producer notoriously famous for his bachelor ways with gals half his 63 years. This weekend, he’s accompanying Marin (Amanda Peet) to her mother’s beach house to finally consummate their friendship. Plans are interrupted when mom, famous playwright Erica Barry (Diane Keaton), shows up with her sister, Zoe (Frances McDormand)
Erica isn’t particularly thrilled to see Marin with this guy, and Zoe, a women's studies teacher, grills him on the psychological implications of his lifestyle. Beginning a series of contrivances, Harry has a heart attack forcing him on an extended stay with the uptight Erica as she works on her latest play. With Harry’s doctor, Julian (Keanu Reeves), quite the fan of Erica’s and Marin making goo-goo eyes at him, the stage is set for a predetermined outcome that we can all see is in the cards.
That’s where Something’s Gotta Give begins to surprise, though. We know that Erica and Harry are anti-star-crossed and are destined to like each other eventually, but their friendship begins much sooner than we expect. Normally we have to suffer through scene after scene of witless bickering until the characters realize that no one else would have their meandering asses except each other. There’s a little of that, including the trailer’s literal money shot where Harry catches a fully nude Erica with all the hysterical grace of “MY EYES!”
Their courtship is played out nicely, even if it can’t help interrupting them so the film can stretch to over two hours. It was refreshing to see Peet’s Marin not played up like just some impressionable, oversexed twit in the beginning. But that’s precisely how she acts when it comes time for her to show up unannounced and wreck some intimate kitchen talk between the two elders.
Meyers’ lack of creativity is on full display with machinations like this and the You’ve Got Mail instant message dialogue, but we’re pulled back in whenever Nicholson and Keaton are just allowed to be left alone. Their lovemaking scene is beautifully handled, funny and touching all at once. Still, we fear it may all be short-lived as they head back into the city with 45 minutes of running time left.
Sure enough, it takes no less than two more suspected heart attacks, a misunderstanding that isn’t even sure it’s actually a misunderstanding and the bickering we thought was long gone to slowly begin sinking this ship.
The difference between a great writer and a mediocre writer can be studied within the Nicholson character. Consider what James L. Brooks could have done with this aging womanizer. On current display there isn’t much to him at all. He is successful, likes young women and makes no apologies for it. Other than having him break down and cry (mostly for comic effect), how much of Harry’s arc is really based on anything other than plot necessities? Brooks, who has already written Nicholson to two Oscars, would have refined that arc and found sharper ways to use humor than having Harry’s morphined ass hang out the back of his hospital gown.
Nicholson may have top billing, but Keaton is the film’s rock and boy does she radiate. If the implied glow women have after a night of great sex has any merit, than Keaton must have been getting some good lovin’ before every shot. Erica is the only fully realized presence in the film and Keaton is the sole reason my mind strayed away from the EXIT sign rather early. It’s a great performance that walks a tightrope between an emotionally clogged human being and the sitcom punchline that Meyers flirts with. How many wailing crying fits does it take before it stops being funny? Two’s company.
This is the Jack and Diane show, so supporting perfs come and go as they please. Keanu Reeves does some very charming work as the suitor infatuated with Erica. Meyers doesn’t give him much of a character other than “nice young doctor who likes aged wine.” Why does he so blindly prefer Erica to say, her daughter? C’mon, Nancy, you have to do more than just make him a counterpoint to Harry. Explore the less-discussed younger man/older woman dynamic. Give him a mommy complex. Something! The fact that Reeves makes Julian work and manages to outcharm Nicholson on his own turf is a compliment I never thought I’d ever pay to Keanu. Frances McDormand is terrific before she’s reduced to a silent cameo in the final 100 minutes and poor Jon Favreau can look for his role in the editing room after being reduced to about three inconsequential lines. His cameo in Elf was bigger.I was happy that Something’s Gotta Give managed to waylay my expectations on where it was headed. So much so, that I was very close to recommending it. But Meyers couldn’t resist living up to her predisposed reputation with an ending so false that it’s almost indescribable. She hadn’t quite earned the emotional heartache she was headed for by deciding to focus on the less-fleshed out Nicholson character, but at least there was a consistency to it. There’s none to how it finally plays out and I felt sadder and angrier for one character than happier for two. Shame on you Nancy Meyers for almost allowing me to believe that you were capable of making a good film, but thank you for being consistent with my kiss-of-death argument.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8384&reviewer=198
originally posted: 12/12/03 17:06:02
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
 |
USA
12-Dec-2003 (PG-13)
DVD: 30-Mar-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
08-Jan-2004
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
