Meryl Streep is the ultimate sexy role model for women over 50. She gamely plays the perfect Nancy Meyers woman. Who doesn’t want to see Baldwin as the love-sick, fat ex-husband?

Over fifty Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) has everything: Three devoted and lovely children without one DUI, trip to rehab, or the need for bail. Her bakery shop/restaurant is thriving and successful. She’s a first class chef. She lives in a gorgeous, Architectural Digest-perfect house in leafy, tree-choked Santa Barbara – where reality is in soft-focus and everyone drinks red wine. Jane has good friends, a vegetable garden, and a very rich ex-husband, lawyer Jake (Alec Baldwin).

They were married for nearly 20 years and have been divorced for ten. Jake cheated on Jane with hot, rail-thin Agness (Lake Bell). He lost his mind and married Agness. Promptly, Agness ran off with a Mexican, had a child, and returned to Jake.

Agness’s love child, Pedro, is now five years old and he is Jake’s personal Grand Inquisitor. Agness is a real ball-buster. Jake might have the cash, but he is bullied by Agness and disliked by Pedro. In fact, Agness has him going to a fertility clinic to boost up his sperm count. It’s time for a baby. Jake is henpecked and his only clever revenge is to have an affair with his ex-wife.

Outside Nancy Meyers’s world, divorces do not come this civil. In real life, Jane would have been resentful until the day she died and thereafter.

Meyers’s should have given Jane a second ex-husband who drove her house into foreclosure, ran off with her oldest daughter, and trafficked in kiddie porn. (I’m not speaking from experience. I had other – in retrospect, rather mundane – issues with my ex-husbands.) Then, starting up again with Jake – an overweight savior, if you will – would have made sense.

When Jane and Jake’s middle child, son Luke (Hunter Parrish), graduates from college, the family gathers in New York City to celebrate. (That’s the way you do it if you live in horse country.) An evening of drinks and dinner ends with Jane and Jake in bed. According to Jake, the Earth shook and moved off its axis. It was a night of sexual ecstasy without a prescription drug. Jake wants his ex-wife back. He likes the excitement. Jane should like the fact that she is having sex with Agness’s husband.

Then Jane meets architect Adam (Steve Martin) who has been divorced for 2 years and is not meeting the right kind of women. He’s meek, successful, and a dutiful, though apprehensive, suitor. Now, as Adam works with Jane on her million-dollar extension to her house, he starts to desire mature Jane over all others.

Writer-director Nancy Meyers stacks everything in Jane’s favor. The house is crowded with food, openness and laughter. Jane is so winning and without any bitterness that you cannot believe she has spent 10 years alone.

Every time Jake stops by her house, it is filled with his grown children feasting on Mom’s cooking. Well, at least Meyers’s didn’t have them singing 80′s songs.

Meyers plays up Jane’s insecurities to the delight of the audience. While Jake loves his fat body, Jane doesn’t want him to see her naked. When Jake complimented Jane on foregoing the de rigueur “Hollywood” wax, the audience became hysterical.

Jane’s age is front and center: She even asks Adam if she is too old for him.

I applaud Meyers addressing the pot issue with Jane and Adam getting stoned. Let’s bring back smoking pot as an ageless sofa sport and see it as a fun thing to do. It really is a highlight of IT’S COMPLICATED and an audience-pleaser.

Alec Baldwin chews up the scenery and clearly is having a ball. He’s damn proud of his hairy belly – Jake earned it! (It’s perfect: All men over 50 look in the mirror and see a 30-year-old fresh off the basketball court. All women over 40 see The Wicked Witch of the West looking back at them.)

Baldwin knows this is his Jack Nicholson role in Meyers’s SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE (which mirrors this, but without Streep going full-frontal – Baldwin does that). Meyers does show Jake genuinely caring for Pedro. He’s not all bad. But Jake’s a cheater and once he wins Jane, he’ll be looking again at the office temps.

THE PAINTED VEIL

Provocative and highly emotional. Watts and Norton are sensational.

It is 1920 and free-spirited, aristocratic Londoner Kitty (Naomi Watts) flees her oppressive mother by marrying Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton), a no-nonsense, dull bacteriologist. Walter has fallen in love with Kitty at first sight, though she shows no interest in him. Regardless, Kitty accepts Walter’s sudden marriage proposal and they go off to Shanghai, where he is in civil service.

With nothing to do in Shanghai and Walter spending all of his time in “boring” research, Kitty becomes restless. She is frivolous and reminds Walter that she is only interested in playing games and dancing. He tries to please her. Kitty recklessly begins an affair with the very married English Vice Consul Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Kitty is so careless that she invites Charlie to afternoon assignations in their home. When Walter discovers her infidelity he is furious. The word cuckold comes to mind. He has been betrayed. He will punish Kitty.

He offers Kitty a proposition: Immediate divorce or accompany him to a remote village where there is a raging cholera epidemic. He has accepted a position as a doctor and leaves the next day. Kitty refuses, believing Charlie will divorce and marry her. Kitty finds out that Charlie is simply entertaining himself in another casual affair. She has no choice but to go with Walter.

After a punishing and unnecessary two-week journey to remote Mei-tan-fu, Kitty is further shocked by their bare quarters and the dead bodies left everywhere. Kitty, like Walter, refuses a cholera vaccine. The villagers do not like foreigners and Kitty is given a bodyguard. The people do not consider Walter a savior but an intruder and a threat to their ancient customs. They do not want his help. However, he does have unwilling support from Army Colonel Yu (Anthony Wong). Walter finds that the water is contaminated. The people insist on keeping the dead for days in their houses.

Kitty and Walter’s only friend is neighbor, ex-pat officer Waddington (Toby Jones, so brilliant in INFAMOUS), who made a life in the village. Waddington represents the type of Brit who relinquishes the hierarchical English class system for the pleasures of an exotic culture. In a phrase – he’s gone native.

Since the conditions at the hospital are horrendous, the French nuns, who run an orphanage, treat Walter like a saint.

If only they knew this was a punishment for his wife’s adultery.

The Mother Superior (Diana Rigg) invites Kitty to visit and she soon realizes how valuable Walter is and the selfless work he is doing. Kitty starts to admire Walter, but he is not willing to forgive her. Kitty decides to help out at the orphanage and begins to make changes in herself and her attitude towards Walter.

These two are doomed. I loved it!

The Chinese production is rich and authentic. This being a period piece should not have a negative factor on the box office, since Watts is sensational. Watch how realistically frightened she is when she knows Walter wants to talk to her about the affair. Watts conveys, with subtlety, all the emotions of a woman trapped in oppressive circumstances. Norton also gives a finely-tuned performance as a man once eager to please his wife, shocked by the betrayal, emasculated, and then, revengeful.

Director John Curran, working from a script by Ron Nyswaner (adapted from the novel by W. Somerset Maugham), allows the actors (Watts, Norton, Schreiber and Jones) a lush space to express themselves. Some directors just do not care – how often I see it!* – but Curran shows a darkly emotional style of directing that will garner him the attention of many Hollywood actresses.

* It would have been great if director Robert De Niro had given Angelina Jolie the time to express – non-verbally – her disdain, bitterness, and loneliness in THE GOOD SHEPHERD. Of course, Billy Crudup knows how to convey suspicious distrust by just arching his eyebrows. Instead, De Niro gave himself the meatiest cameo. There is one moment in the terrific thriller THE DESCENT when a female character glances at the husband of her friend. It told the entire back-story and hung suspiciously over what followed.

Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures present a Waverly Films production
Running time — 125 minutes / MPAA rating: PG-13

The trailer insulted me and the premise is cruel. Of course, we all know that Keaton’s humiliation will be trumped by Nicholson falling madly in love with her and realizing his stupidity at rejecting her. He’ll become miserable and long for her. There will be a happy, happy ending.

However, the spine of the story is flawed. What young, sexy woman would not want to make love to a 67 year old man who is short, balding, has a visible paunch, is witless, graceless, disrespectful, and a bore? Oh, yeah: also a braggart. This kind of man will only succeed with young girls if he is a rich, famous movie star. Victoria Secret models do not merrily date the used car salesman who is over 65 and rents. (The average elderly man looking for a young chick would be best advised to troll in a third world country and wave the requisite, persuasive bargaining chip – the spousal visa.)

Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) is a 63-year-old music mogul dating Marin (Amanda Peet). Sanborn prides himself in never dating women older than 30. We love him already! He is so gracious! Indeed, a man who boasts like this must love women!

We want to spend the evening with him as he brags about his sexual conquests!

In the embarrassing trailer, Sanborn nearly has apoplexy when he mistakenly sees Marin’s mother,Erica (Diane Keaton),naked in her own house. Ah, the horror! Not for a minute would any woman shriek in terror at seeing flabby, fat Sanborn nude. By the way, Erica is slim, fit, attractive, smart, charming, a highly successful Broadway playwright, rich, sweet, and has a gorgeous beachfront Hamptons retreat. All this, but unfortunately she’s way too old for Sanborn.

Sanborn has a “slight” heart attack while spending the weekend as Marin’s guest at Erica’s house. He only gets as far as taking off his pants revealing to Erica and her sister Zoe (Frances McDormand) his romantic intent vis-à-vis Marin. At the hospital, Erica meets Sanborn’s ER doctor, Julian Mercer (Keanu Reeves), who is a big fan of Erica’s work. Mercer quickly becomes infatuated by Erica. He looks at her with sincere sexual interest. He shows genuine fondness for her as a strikingly handsome woman. He is not afraid of her “old lady” body. He wants her. He appreciates her. He admires her. In a wonderful performance, Reeves shows us all this. Keaton is appropriately flattered and responds by blushing and being embarrassingly disarmed by the attention. At least Erica knows her place in the youth-obsessed Western world.

At the hospital Mercer misidentifies Sanborn as Marin’s grandfather. Thus begins the humiliation flip-flop. Now, it’s Sanborn’s turn. He shows his saggy backside that young woman want. He takes Viagra.

He needs it? I’m shocked!

Mercer advises Sanborn not to leave the Hamptons. He must stay at Erica’s while Marin goes back to the city. Erica and Sanborn spend time together. Sanborn reluctantly begins to like Erica while Mercer actively pursues her. Sanborn is a cad, so it is rather disarming that Erica begins to see him as a possible sexual partner.

They have sex. Erica has a powerful orgasm. She falls in love with him. She dumps Mercer for a man who will never recognize his big character flaws.

Screenwriter-director Nancy Meyers is manipulative. However, the manipulation is so skillful and the set-up so clever, that SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE works. Keaton is perfect and the audience loves the fact that Nicholson makes fun of himself, uses Viagra, and realizes that Erica is truly a fantastic woman.

I enjoyed the movie purely for its stark manipulative excess, but never for once believed that Sanborn would change. I saw unhappiness in Erica’s future.

Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Nancy Meyers
Producers: Bruce A. Block, Nancy Meyers
Director of photography: Michael Bullhaus
Production designer: Jon Hutman
Music: Hans Zimmer
Co-producer: Suzanne Farwell
Costume designer: Suzanne McCabe
Editor: Joe Hutshing

Cast:
Harry Sanborn: Jack Nicholson
Erica Barry: Diane Keaton
Julian: Keanu Reeves
Zoe: Frances McDormand
Marin: Amanda Peet
Leo: Jon Favreau
Dave: Paul Michael Glaser
Dr. Martinez: Rachel Ticotin