Baldwin, Streep steam up 'It's Complicated'
If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that AARP underwrote "It's Complicated" because of its positive depictions of fiftysomethings having healthy libidos and a take-charge view of life.
The sex scenes between Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep are so fun and hot that at any moment you half-way expect one of them to blurt out Meg Ryan's deli speech in "When Harry Met Sally" - "Yes! Yes! Yesssssssssssss!"
Jane Adler (Streep) is single after divorcing Jake (Baldwin) 10 years earlier. Jake, now 58, has married Agnes (Lake Bell), the much younger, trimmer hottie Jake met while stepping out on his wife.
The graduation of their son Luke (Hunter Parrish) brings the ex-spouses to New York, where a chance encounter at the bar mixed with a lot of wine and conversation puts them into several compromising positions.
Jane's gaggle of gossiping girlfriends (among them Mary Kay Place and Rita Wilson) can't believe Jane's become the other woman to the wife who used to be the other woman!
"It's Complicated" comes from director/writer Nancy Meyers, who has a knack for popular romantic comedies oozing with calculated cuteness and easy affections. She creates several funny vignettes in which Jake and Jane have way too much fun for people their ages.
But Meyers gives all the good stuff to her leads, and lets everyone else in the movie starve for anything beyond functional dialogue.
The three grown Adler kids (Parrish, Zoe Kazan and Caitlin Fitzgerald) are interchangeable and vaguely defined. Jake's wife is a shallow, bossy witch.
Even Steve Martin's Adam, a divorced architect with grand designs on Jane, comes off as a listless dullard (as in "square" fits him to a T), despite a comic bit in which he and Jane partake of some potent weed just before a child's party.
The supporting cast is salvaged by John Krasinski as Harley, Jane's prospective son-in-law. He is the only person who realizes what Jane and Jake are up to, and bolsters the movie with a series of comically priceless reactions.
Streep has a lot of fun with Jane as she rediscovers the joys of great sex, but "It's Complicated" belongs first and foremost to Baldwin, who chews through Meyers' fawning dialogue with robust glee and cheerfully appears to bear all for his art in a Webcam scene that tops anything witnessed in an "American Pie" teen comedy.
'It's Complicated'
Rating: ★ ★ ½
Starring: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski
Directed by: Nancy Meyer
Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated R for drug use, sexual situations. 118 minutes