It's Complicated

Watch Trailer

A part of me wants to like It's Complicated and its writer-director Nancy Meyers: a rom-com in today's cinematic climate will invariably star two impossibly beautiful leads in their late teens or mid-twenties but Meyers, writer and director of What Women Want, The Holiday and Something's Gotta Give, is determined to show that love exists past forty and, in Meryl Streep's case, into sixty. This is all good but even though Meyers' characters are pushing on they exhibit the same level of immaturity as their younger cohorts.

As It's Complicated opens, Streep (looking younger every time we see her) and Baldwin (getting larger every time we see him) have been divorced for a number of years but have grown past their bitterness and are now able to meet at parties hosted by friends without any dishes flying. Streep might be single but her life has blossomed without Baldwin, opening a small but successful restaurant; Baldwin has moved on too, marrying a single mother who is pushing him into fatherhood - something he's not too keen on.

When the two meet at their son's graduation, they have one too many and wind up in bed together. Baldwin wants to continue the clandestine affair but Streep, worried that she's making the same mistakes again and that their actions will upset their three children (the eldest of which is marrying US Office's Krasinski), not to mention Baldwin's new wife and adopted son, tries everything to keep him at arm's length. Into this mix comes Steve Martin's gentleman architect, a shy divorcee who attempts to woo Streep...

Revelling in blandness, It's Complicated could be re-titled It's Formulaic. With the material at hand, Meyers had an opportunity to avoid predictability and the genre's well-worn clichés. It might be Baldwin and Streep on the poster but this is very much Streep's movie. Baldwin's dilemma of cheating on his new wife while attending fertility tests is glossed over as Streep's pickle is given more screen time: should she try something new with the sweet and sensitive Martin, or lapse into familiarity with Baldwin, who seems to have shed all the annoying aspects of his personality in the years since the divorce. “We've grown into the people we've always wanted to be,” he says. It's a predicament that had an opportunity to explore further but insight and originality are not something Meyers is interested in.

It's not all bad, though. Streep is fun and displays a decent chemistry with an admittedly smug Baldwin. Waists expand as we get older and kudos to Baldwin for not being shy about bringing attention to it (he brings it up more than once and is prepared to strip off when needed too). Fluffy and lightweight, It's Complicated will entertain while it's on but there's nothing here that will stick in the mind once the end credits role. I'm glad Meyers is out there making her middle-aged rom-coms but something punchier wouldn't go amiss.