IT'S COMPLICATED

Written and Directed by Nancy Meyers
Starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin and John Krasinski


Jake: You know what they say, people in nursing homes with plants live longer than people without."

The title says it all. IT’S COMPLICATED, alright. The sad part is it isn’t nearly as complicated as these folks make it out to be. I concede that starting an affair with your ex-husband after he is remarried to the younger woman that broke up your own marriage would definitely qualify as complicated. I also agree that hiding that affair from your kids and the guy you just started dating makes it even worse. Just don’t ask me to feel bad for you though because it is only as complicated as you allow it to be.

Writer/Director Nancy Meyers knows what movie audiences want around the holidays. Her previous works (WHAT WOMEN WANT and SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE, to name a couple) have been big holiday hits and IT’S COMPLICATED will be no different. Albeit sometimes forced, it is actually quite funny at times. Meryl Streep plays Jane, a 50-something single woman whose kids have all left her very costly nest and who finds herself alone for the first time in her life. It isn’t long before her neurosis and several bottles of wine find her in bed with her ex (Alec Baldwin). The twosome are such talented actors that going along with all their antics often not only leads to hilarity but also character and insight, a rarity in safe fare like this. And let me just say that Streep should get stoned in all of her movies from now on. That woman is downright silly sometimes.


To get complicated, things need to get dirty first and IT’S COMPLICATED is far too clean to qualify. It’s like Hollywood’s take on the kinds of desperate scenarios indie film characters find themselves in. As they sit amidst all their perfect privilege and wealth though, their woes only come across as whiny. Funny, sure, but self-indulgent too.

BABY MAMA

Written and Directed by Michael McCullers
Starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Sigourney Weaver and Steve Martin


Kate Holbrook: It’s nice to feel needed, useful, important.
Angie Ostrowiski: I like all of those words.

This one’s for the ladies! Here we have one woman, Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey), who cannot get pregnant and then enlists another woman, Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler) as her surrogate, or in the more contemporary sense, as her BABY MAMA. Angie leaves her dope of a common-law partner and moves in with Kate and the two go from cat fighting to slumber parties in no time. They’re having babies; they’re talking boys; they’re singing along to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” in the living room. The estrogen practically slinks off the screen in stilettos. If only this expectant comedy didn’t deliver such expected results.


The female bonding originates with Fey & Poehler’s offscreen friendship and makes for some fabulous chemistry and spontaneous hilarity but it never successfully hides the gaping story holes. Having paid an exorbitant amount of money to a firm that screens its surrogates thoroughly should have essentially eliminated Angie as an option, as she has no functional understanding of what it means to take good care of herself. Before long, perhaps to intentionally rattle us from the unoriginal unfolding of the odd couple one would ordinarily expect, Angie’s intentions come into question in such a manner that it becomes practically impossible to continue letting the good times just go on. Good clean fun is replaced by awkward angst.

This contemporary comedy draws our attention to the business of babies. It does so however in such a hackneyed fashion that if it weren’t for the talented mama’s at the forefront of it all, it would be little more than a painful delivery.

SHOPGIRL

Written by Steve Martin
Directed by Anand Tucker

“Shopgirl” opens with a fluid drift through aisles upon excessive aisles of lipsticks and eye shadows at the Los Angeles chapter of Saks Fifth Avenue. As we weave in and around these pillars of masked beauty products, a sweeping score of sappy strings sucks us along until we reach the secluded glove department where Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) slouches over the counter, hands crossed. People either walk past her without noticing she is there or stop, feel sorry for her and then walk past her. Sadly for us, we must stop, we cannot ignore her and we cannot keep going. We must live in Mirabelle’s sullen, uneventful existence for what feels like an indeterminate amount of time and we will wonder why she exists at all. The overbearing orchestration suddenly drops out and we are for a moment relieved it is quiet. It is just for a moment though as it is now too quiet, eerie quiet. “Shopgirl” continues like this, changing moods between awkwardly quiet and nauseously schmaltzy through to the end, at which point I had sunken so deep in my chair with despair.

Mirabelle is a 28-year-old native of Vermont who moved to L.A. for no apparent reason other than it not being Vermont. She works, or rather alternates between standing and leaning behind a counter for 8 hours each day, at Saks then goes home in her rickety pickup truck to her mismatched apartment where she occasionally draws. She has nothing in particular of substance in her life and doesn’t seem to mind being completely stagnant, going through the exact same routine every day. Granted, repetition is a part of life, but repetition in a film is just plain, well, repetitive. Director Anand Tucker is apparently a big admirer of repetition as each scene in “Shopgirl” is essentially a recreation of other scenes. Establishing shots of Mirabelle’s apartment make numerous appearances each time the story shifts to that location with little variation in angle taking any humourous air out of the illogical maze of stairs it takes to find her apartment. Most scenes shared by Mirabelle and Ray Porter (Steve Martin) are sex scenes and despite being tame and tasteful, there are only so many times I can sit through these uncomfortable moments. And has anyone ever noticed how HUGE Mr. Martin’s hands are?

Speaking of Steve, “Shopgirl” is his baby, as he is the author of both the screenplay and the novella it’s based on. Filling Ray Porter’s shoes in the film puts Martin’s motivation into a questionable context as he comes across as living out a fantasy to be the unattached older guy who gets the unsuspecting younger trophy girl. Both the novella and the film portray Ray as a man confident with his desire to remain free while using that same confidence as a means to hide his loneliness and genuine desire to be loved. The film falters when it places more importance on Ray’s plight than on Mirabelle’s as the title character now makes no decisions. Instead she is chosen by Ray or by her other younger suitor, Jeremy (played by Jason Schwartzman who provides some truly funny moments as a dysfunctional, romantic roadie). Martin’s elimination of key story elements from the novella that explain the why’s of Mirabelle’s depression and fear of men or even Ray’s rationale behind choosing Mirabelle in the first place leave so much unexplained that by the time Ray Porter’s voice over commentary on Mirabelle finding some semblance of happiness closes the film (accompanied of course by the reliable string section), it is hollow and meaningless. As is she and as is this film.