It's Complicated: It's Raining Menopause

It’s easy to hate Meryl Streep’s character in It’s Complicated: she’s a serenely wealthy Martha Stewart-style entrepreneur who runs an overpriced Santa Barbara coffee-and-pastry shop that sells granola at $6.50 a bag, has raised three perfect children, and who lives in a huge, gorgeous home that is apparently still not huge and gorgeous enough to suit her, because she’s hired an architect to build an addition. But writer/director Nancy Meyers does something very shrewd — before you even have time to hate Meryl Streep, she introduces you to someone even more hateable: Lake Bell, the younger woman who seduced Streep’s husband (Alec Baldwin) away from her, and who makes her smug entrance at a party dressed in little more than a bikini top and a wrap skirt that exposes every inch of her smooth, toned tummy. She looks like the woman Streep left Woody Allen for 30 years ago in Manhattan, in fact, but now the shoe is on the other foot, and Streep is left feeling old, fat, undesirable, and sadly alone.

It’s Complicated makes no attempt to deny that it is anything other than a luxuriously appointed romantic fantasy for 50-year-old women — Streep, who begins the film feeling so lonely, soon has two men fighting for her attention, her randy, devilish ex and a sweet but perhaps slightly too nice architect played by Steve Martin — and as such, it’s gotten a lot of dismissive reviews from critics, especially young male ones, whose idea of a good breakup comedy is something like High Fidelity. But you know what? It’s Complicated is actually a better-written, or at least better-structured movie than High Fidelity, one that actually dramatizes Streep’s conflicted romantic allegiances instead of thinking you can get the job done with a few glib monologues delivered into the camera. Sure, Meyers panders to her audience’s tastes and expectations — and how is that different from High Fidelity again?

This is old-fashioned upscale comedy screenwriting, made for grownups and carefully tailored to its stars’ glamourous personalities — it’s like Garson Kanin, with some Flomax jokes thrown in. It’s not the kind of film I’d ever aspire to writing, but I have to tip my hat to the skill with which Meyers smoothly moves her characters around the chessboard, clearly establishes her story’s emotional beats, and artfully sets up a running gag for John Krasinski as Streep’s son-in-law, who keeps accidentally learning more information than he wants about every development in the Streep/Baldwin/Martin love triangle.

I also like how Meyers gives Streep and Baldwin a well-thought-out history together — the movie is glib in a lot of ways, but every scene between these two ex-spouses feels like it’s informed by a rich shared past. Of course, Baldwin is such an irresistible seducer, even with his now-ample gut, that he could probably make any actress feel at ease with him, like an old lover. There’s a wonderful post-coital moment where Baldwin places his hand on Streep’s privates and murmurs, “Home sweet home.” It’s such a blissfully dirty line, especially when it’s directed at someone like Meryl Streep, who has always seemed so unreachable and immaculate onscreen that suggesting she even has genitalia feels naughty.

Streep has never been a natural comic actress — there’s a montage where she makes late-night chocolate croissants with Steve Martin, and you can feel poor Meryl working her head off, trying, in vain, to be funny. Of course, Meyers doesn’t really require Streep to be funny, for the most part — that’s Baldwin’s job. But you’re always very aware of how hard Meyers is working to protect Streep, lighting and costuming her to look radiant and letting her male co-stars shoulder most of the comedy load.

And I think that’s what prevents It’s Complicated from being more than merely a good movie — in a comedy, there should be nothing, no layers of protection, surrounding the lead. Comedy needs an element of risk. Baldwin is happy to show the camera his belly and his gloriously flabby ass (Streep’s house isn’t the only thing in the movie that’s expanded), but in a key scene where Streep displays her naked body to Baldwin for the very first time since their divorce, Meyers demurely preserves her modesty and doesn’t show us anything below Streep’s shoulders. I fully realize that the world regards 60-year-old actresses like Streep more cruelly than it does 50-year-old men like Baldwin, so I understand Meyers’ and Streep’s decision. But boy, it would have made the payoff — Baldwin getting thoroughly aroused at the sight of her, only to faint dead at her feet — a whole lot funnier if they’d taken a more explicit approach.

It now occurs to me that I must be the only guy who came out of It’s Complicated more interested in seeing a naked Meryl Streep than a naked Lake Bell. But as Alec Baldwin comes to learn by the end of the film, what you want the most is precisely the thing you can’t have.