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Driven by Elizabeth Olsen’s mesmerising lead performance, this languid and unsettling story buries deep into your mind

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It's Complicated (Film)

by Annette Basile | January 04, 2010 12:25 | Edited January 04, 2010 12:32

Above average, 'mature' rom-com, bolstered by Alec Baldwin’s charismatic ability to poke fun at himself.

There's something about Alec Baldwin that's simultaneously self-deprecating and egotistical. He has an ability to send up his own vanity - like in this film, when he suavely pokes fun at his pot belly, which is displayed in all its naked glory. That ability makes for cutting comedy on TV's 30 Rock, as it does in It's Complicated, a rom-com targeted at the ‘mature' end of the market.

 

He may co-star with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin, but it's Baldwin's film. Streep, however, is the focus. She plays Jane, a stock-standard character who runs a successful bakery and lives in one of those big, breezy American celluloid houses.

 

Divorced and lonely, her love life is rudely reawakened in the form of her no-good ex-husband Jake (Baldwin). Problem is, he's married to the much younger Agness (Lake Bell, TV's Boston Legal), who home-wrecked Jane and Jake's marriage. Plus there's another potential lover hovering around our heroine - nice guy architect Adam (Martin). Martin is suitably restrained as the sensitive divorcee. But for Streep, Jane's almost too easy - there are no accents to master or musical instruments to learn. Streep's funny, but it's a flimsy character.

Yet this is an above-average romantic comedy, only slightly let down by a generally weak support cast. Jane's three grown-up kids are bland, and her female friends - who collapse into ‘fits of girlish laughter' - are faceless.

As in many Hollywood comedies, writer/director Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday) forgets she's painting on a big screen canvas. As a cinema experience, it's a great DVD. But Meyers shows a keen instinct for screwball scenarios here, and the pairing of odd couple Streep and Baldwin pay offs.  

It starts sluggishly and draws out its conclusion, but in between, this is a very funny rom-com that breaks out of the chick-flick zone.