Title: Those '70s stars;
Veteran charmers Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson
redeem the middling midlife romance of "Something's Gotta
Give.".(VARIETY
Date: 12/12/2003; Publication: Star Tribune (
Byline: Colin Covert; Staff Writer
As the pram-robbing perennial bachelor Harry Sanborn in "Something's Gotta Give," Jack Nicholson reprises a role he has perfected onscreen and off.
A scalawag satyr who considers 30 the retirement age for women in his dating pool, Harry is catnip to the ladies. He's funny, accomplished, fabulously wealthy and a seemingly unobtainable romantic escape artist. Bringing this sort of Hefneresque rogue male to heel is a reassuringly predictable chick-lit plot line, and while the film won't drive you delirious with suspense about where it's going, the journey is pleasant enough.
Harry is about to spend a romantic weekend with his newest infatuation,
Marin
The recently divorced Erica expresses her disdain at Harry's chauvinistic values over dinner, and then finds herself stuck with him as a house guest when he suffers a heart attack that prevents him from leaving. Shaken by his brush with death, Harry is amazed to find himself attracted to the middle-aged Erica. When his emergency-room doctor, Julian Mercer (Keanu Reeves), also falls for the svelte, accomplished writer, complications multiply. Erica suddenly has a new lease on life, but too many tenants.
A movie like this needs first-class banter, but writer/director Nancy Meyers doesn't provide much sparkling repartee. Dinner-table discussions of Harry's amorous adventures turn into freshman lectures in gender studies, and the intellectual, worldly characters establish their cultural credentials with tasteful possessions rather than clever insights.
Meyers' script feels like the work of a middlebrow writing about highbrows and getting it wrong. She's most confident in the film's most vulgar moments, pandering for laughs with Viagra gags and comic shots of her stars' nudity. The laughs come, but there's not much pleasure in them.
The movie's real value is in the performances. While the premise is sitcommy and much of the humor is coy, Nicholson and Keaton project understated intelligence. Alternately tormented by her tug-of-war love affairs and inspired to turn them into a new Broadway comedy, Erica is on an emotion-charged roller coaster that would test the mettle of most actresses. Keaton, equally adept at drama and comedy, pulls off the laughter and heartbreak handsomely. Rarely reverting to Annie Hall's neurotic tics, she makes Erica's predicament genuine.
Nicholson's character begins as a smug self-caricature, but after his first-act crisis, new dimensions of personality emerge that make the aging playboy endearing.
For all his experience, Nicholson never has played love scenes, and in this part he reveals a dimension of his talent we have not seen before. Harry's tentative tenderness with a woman who has every reason to mistrust him is keenly observed human nature. If Harry has more than his share of character defects - Meyers, a purebred feminist, sent Mel Gibson to sensitivity school in "What Women Want" - Nicholson also presents him as a decent man capable of reassessing his nature when it becomes a roadblock to his happiness.
A grown-up relationship movie like this should offer us food for thought, but Meyers only gives us a light snack. She cures her characters' emotional entanglement with nuclear families and bourgeois values. Seventy years ago Noel Coward's witty love triangle "Design for Living" pulled the rug out from under audiences by ending with a friendly menage a trois. We are much less imaginative now.
Colin Covert is at ccovert@startribune.com.
REVIEW
Something's Gotta Give
Two and a half out of four stars
The setup: A fiftyish playwright (Diane Keaton) with diminishing romantic prospects finds herself pursued by an entertainment mogul (Jack Nicholson) and a dashing young doctor (Keanu Reeves).
What works: Fine, wise performances by Nicholson and Keaton.
What doesn't: Dialogue that isn't as smart as the characters speaking it. Flat, pat plotting.
Great line: "I've never lied to you," Nicholson says. "I've always told you some version of the truth."
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