“It’s Complicated”: But not complicated enough

Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep in “It’s Complicated”.

In "It's Complicated", Jane, a woman in her late 50s, played by Meryl Streep, 60, is an object of great desire. Her ex-husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), who left her 10 years ago for a skinny mean woman, has suddenly taken major interest in her. Meanwhile, a lonely, reasonably attractive architect named Adam (Steve Martin) wants to take her to French film festivals and dance with her.
Mature audiences should all be grateful that there's a movie about a senior citizen, who isn't French or Julie Christie, having a love life, right?
One would like to say that writer/director Nancy Meyers' film is cause for celebration, but it's a bit more complicated than that. Meyers has written some astute scenes about aging and regret, heartbreak and hope. In the role of a successful businesswoman -- Jane owns and operates an upscale bakery/café -- who finds herself in the unlikely position of having an affair with her ex-husband, Streep is radiant, funny and endearingly vulnerable.
But Meyers demonstrates, as she did in "Something's Gotta Give" and "The Holiday", an extraordinarily limited worldview. Her heroines are allowed just one problem, and it will never, ever include a lack of taste. Jane's semi-rural Santa Barbara home is a hydroponic dreamland, where tomatoes grow implausibly round and fully ripe in springtime. Her spacious, beautiful kitchen is filled with shelves of cake plates and creamy white platters, just waiting for this formerly unappreciated domestic goddess to fill them with homemade bounty.
Moreover, Jake, who seems like such a cheery rogue in all the film's trailers, is so odious that the affair makes little sense. It's not Baldwin's fault; he's good at being bad, and Jake's awfulness does lend itself to comedy of the oh-no-he-didn't variety.
He's missed his first wife's roast chicken and chocolate layer cake. He's missed sharing nuclear family time with Jane and their three grown children, Lauren (Caitlin Fitzgerald), Luke (Hunter Parrish) and Gabby (Zoe Kazan), who look and act as though they've been ordered from the J. Crew catalogue. So what's in it for Jane? The viewer understands that she wants the validation of finally hearing her husband admit he made a mistake. The second wife, Agness (Lake Bell), is a huge disappointment: temperamental, with "a big job," a demanding child who diminishes stepfather Jake every chance he gets, as well as a feverish desire to get pregnant again. Jake wants to flee, and like a wandering dog he just wants to get back home again.
It's a wronged woman's dream scenario, and Meyers' intent in showing the reality of the fantasy coming true is clever and fresh. But "It's Complicated" is positioned more as a which-guy-will-she-choose story, and thanks to Jake's clear-cut case of being a jerk, there's not a lot of dramatic tension to feed that plot line.
Compiled by Correspondent