Something's Gotta Give

Something's Gotta Give
December 12, 2003
Columbia
Romance, Comedy, Drama
DVD
B-

I bought this movie on accident.  I was thinking it was As Good As It Gets, because they both have forgettable, almost meaningless titles and they're both rom-coms with dramatic streaks and Jack Nicholson.  By the time I realized my mistake, I wasn't sure if I had ever seen this movie.  Possibly but not necessarily.

It turns out I had but it hadn't particularly stayed with me.  Not that it's bad but it's so I don't know, genteel (even in the crude moments), with characters dressed in white and beige (and sometimes black) and spending much of their time in a Hamptons beach house out of a design magazine, that I had blocked it out.  Watching it again, I remember thinking I couldn't imagine any circumstance in which I would choose Nicholson over Keanu Reeves.  It's not just a matter of looks and age.  Keanu is absolutely sweet but not stupid in this movie, and in my head-canon he later hooks up with the heroine's sister Zoe, played by the wonderful Frances McDormand, who's off the screen far too much.

The heroine is playwright Emily Barry, played by Diane Keaton in a deservedly praised performance.  She hits so many emotional tones and it doesn't hurt that she was still a knockout at 57.  I could've done without the way Emily pretty much libelously "fictionalizes" her relationship with Nicholson's character, especially since the things that writer/director/producer Nancy Meyers finds funny, like "the dancing Henrys," just aren't.  It makes the whole thing feel like the sort of wish-fulfillment yet life-inspired fiction you get in the smarter chick-lit, like the works of Marion Keyes or Susan Isaacs.  (See my book blog for examples.)

Getting back to the Nicholson-Keaton romance, I think we're just supposed to accept that they're in love and right for each other, despite their differences, including his general preference for younger women and inexperience at "being a boyfriend."  Maybe it's that I've always found Nicholson a bit creepy and insincere that I just couldn't buy not only his appeal but his change of heart.  That said, I wasn't repulsed, just not invested.  And I do find it ironic that for a movie about people in late middle age, this movie is more "modern" than some of its peers, with IMing, cell phones, and of course Viagra.  Oh, and note, as when Keanu was paired with Barbara Hershey as an older woman in Tune in Tomorrow..., the film ends in Paris.

At least he makes her laugh.

But she doesn't look all that miserable with Keanu.