Hey folks, Harry here... I don't know what it is about the trailer for this one, but I hate the trailer... it just feels like a very flat and boring film... However, with the cast and the talent involved, I've held that it is merely a bad trailer. Afterall... No good film geek wouldn't be at the cinemas to watch Jack do his thing! So here ya go, seems like it's got a lot to offer... Enjoy...
Hi Harry
Julius back again. Lucky me, I got to go to two free screenings this week (picked up both fliers at the same time last week, it had been a regular assault of the free screener folk in front of Lincoln Square cinemas last Friday) Anyway after seeing "The Home at the End of the World" which so uniquely and happily saunters to its own drummer, it was an interesting contrast to see Nancy Meyers' "Something's Gotta Give" with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton (as well as Keanu Reaves, Amanda Peet, Frances MacDormand, Jon Favreau and Rachel Ticotin - the buttkicking riot grrrrl from Total Recall) - this film belongs squarely within hollywood formula filmmaking, but which formula to choose?
Well there's the obvious one: boy and girl meet cute - boy and girl don't get along - strained plot mechanism contrives to keep them in close proximity - boy and girl fall in love - boy and girl break up - boy and girl apart - last minute happy end boy and girl together, if possible in some beautiful foreign local for the final shot. Then there's the old favorite rich-people-at-play-with-love-in-their-fabulous-homes-and-clothes-formula that goes back to Philip Barry movies like "Holiday" and "The Philadelphia Story" and continues through "High Society", "Dynasty" and "Pretty Woman"... Or you have the mature-woman-romantic-fantasy-wish-fulfillment-movie, perfected in melodrama by Douglass Sirk and lately ably essayed by Nora Ephron and Meg Ryan. After all, Diane Keaton plays a divorced woman, greatly accomplished except in letting her guard down, who winds up being romanced by Keanu Reeves in a manner befitting a harlequin romance (and then she gets to dump him!) and the soul mate of a reformed lothario in the guise of Jack Nicholson (slight spoiler: how often have we seen the scene where the perfectly wonderful fiancee-type nobly lets his beloved go for the sake of her true love) . We should all be so lucky. Give our two stars a wisecracking sidekick each, underused but welcome Frances macDormand for Diane, Jon Favreau for Jack, and another Formula has been ably checked off on the list. Throw in walks on the beach, chance encounters of her seeing him with "another woman", the comedy of straight men hugging, heart to heart chats with your daughter about life, and we keep strolling down the fomula supermarket aisle.
Alright, I'm being a bit snarky perhaps, and this probably reads like I'm dumping on the picture. But actually I enjoyed it alot, a lot more than "Love, Actually", actually, which I'd gone in expecting to adore. Maybe it helps not to have the highest expectation. But more importantly, if you are willing to take it all with a healthy dose of the Hollywood formula salt, "Something's Gotta Give" is very entertaining. It's a star vehicle in the best sense of the phrase.
Nancy Meyers, who also wrote (and directed?) "What Woman Want" has written a script that in its broad outline may not hold any surprises, but nonetheless reaches a high level of wit and smarts in her dialog, in how some of the smaller moments and twists and turns are handled, and in how she writes perfect roles for her stars. Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton have very well know personas and have alot of themselves to bring to any role and Meyers uses that to full advantage, giving her stars if not the most complex or original parts to play, then parts that give them plenty oppurtunity to ham it up with gusto, laugh, cry, act silly and smart, which they get to do with intelligence as well as verve, because the sophistication and better-than-sitcom comedy dialog in the writing supports them well. Sometimes I thought that esp. Keaton was overdoing her mannersms a bit, but then she also surprised me the most with her daring no-holds-barred attack on a heartbraek-crying-laughing montage, so I'm glad to take the occasional frillyness in her performance if it allows for those wild and woolly acting outbursts that deftly meld hilarity and heartache. Jack too is given opportunity for comic derring-do and bursts out in (funny for us) tears about four times.
There are moments when the story threatens to come to a gloopy halt, but Meyers manages to pull us out of it before the worst. The story also suffers a little from overextension, but the payoff is that for a short while in the end we aren't so sure anymore where the story might be going, which is nice in an otherwise formulaic movie (there's that word again). Perhaps real life will win out after all? No? Ah well, we still get the happy end in a fabulous location with picturesque snow falling. And "Jack and Diane" (does marketing want us to think of the John Couger Mellancamp song with that add campaign?) give some of their best, most enjoyable performances of their career, so let's just enjoy the treat.
PS: Last post I made an immaturely big deal about Colin Ferrell in the buff. So for full disclosure's sake, let me add, that we get full dorsal Jack and full frontal Diane, both in scenes played for laughs, but I must add, Diane looked good! There's also a lovemaking scene that already feels like a classic lovemaking scene, sexy and silly, involving scissors taken to turtlenecks, bloodpressureguage used as a sex aide, and afterplay punctuated by crying - crying after sex, that's the one thing this movie has in commen with "The Home at the End of the World". And here they manged to make it feel almost as poignant. Which is actually quite an achievement.
Hope this is worth posting, Harry. Again I'm sticking with my new "nom de web", Julius.
