it's Complicated

Grade: B+

If not for the many, many, many talents of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin, this would have been a pat and predictable albeit marginally inviting romantic comedy about a 10-year divorcee who has an affair with her ex and the man who stands patiently on the sidelines.

But this has the many, many, many talents of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin and, not unlike the road less traveled, it has made all the difference.

Always Meryl Streep and yet never Meryl Streep, this year she deserves two Oscar noms (and at least one Oscar) for both the delectable “Julie & Julia” and her performance here. It’s been a bumpy few years from my vantage point – ice-chomping her way through the dreadful remake of “Manchurian Candidate,” Jewing it off the deep end in “Prime” and “singing” her way through “Mama Mia,” but this year her nuance and heart are back in full form, and she’s positively glowing. It is a Martha Stewart life this woman lives post-divorce – the stunning chateau of a home she bought right after her marriage ends, the massive vegetable garden, cut flowers in every room, gorgeously well-centered children (and adorably well-centered son-in-law to be) giddily supportive movie star best friends and a blossoming (yet exceedingly cozy) business. It would all be too much fairy tale good fortune to be tolerated, yet Meryl makes us swallow hook, line and sinker – its Meryl Streep after all, living the life we all want for her and the one we imagine she lives anyway. Self-assured yet vulnerable, radiant yet body-conscious, joyful and yet longing, we all want to be a guest at her next dinner party. A moment of lighthearted rapture melds into “what the fuck am I doing” mortification, and it is Streep at her very best.

As the ex going through yet another mid-life crisis, Alec Baldwin is charismatic and sincere, pot-bellied and seductive, affectionate, comfortable, sad and hopeful, and he and Streep have natural chemistry together. As the man in waiting, Steve Martin goes for subtlety (why is it that broad comics like Martin and Robin Williams often give far better dramatic performances than comedic ones?) a man healing his own broken heart while gracefully seeking the love of another. Our allegiances tend to shift depending on who Streep is with at the time, a testament to the strength of some truly lovely performances.

Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson and Alexandra Wentworth provide a nice sisterhood, and Caitlin Fitzgerald, Zoe Kazan, and Hunter Parrish (the final lead in “Spring Awakening,” who will always have a soft spot in my heart for being in the show’s last performance, one of the most special nights of my life) all appropriately attractive, carefree, clueless and supportive of their divorced parents, and all providing surprising honesty and pathos at the idea of a potential reconciliation. As the family outsider yet one of the family, John Krasinski almost got me to forgive some dreadful theater etiquette (yet another performance of “Spring Awakening,” where he and his gf wouldn’t stop talking and left before the curtain call - blasphemous. I finally asked them to “shut up” sometime during Act II) as the fiancé who sees all and says nothing – he steals more than one scene he’s in.

Genuinely funny, tender with only a sprinkling of sentimentality, and only occasionally predictable to a fault - the missed date, dinner waiting on the beautifully set table. The joint invariably getting discovered and everyone getting stoned, annoying if not for the fact that Streep and Martin are so damn hysterical. And is there anything that makes an audience go “awwww” more than the boy getting turned down for a date with the VIP pair of tickets cradled in his hands? Yet the film also has much to gently convey about feelings that are never extinguished, all the things that might have been, and the possibilities that exist just around the corner.

More movie info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230414/