At the Movies with Fatwayne

The story might be a bit complicated but the cast comes across as more than capable of providing us with a very funny romantic comedy playing off their characters without any complications at all! Evidence of this is provided by the cast winning the National Board of Review Awards honor for best cast.

Meryl Streep is a consummate actress and perhaps the best alive at this time. She plays Jane Adler who has been divorced from her philandering ex-husband for the past 10 years. She has a successful bakery business and a beautiful home in Santa Barbara, California. She is finally becoming accustomed to being divorced and she is happy with her life at this time.

Alec Baldwin plays her “ex,” Jake Adler, who is a partner in a law firm, drives a Porsche and is now married to a much younger woman, Agnes (played by Lake Bell). It is evident that Jake is a boy in a man’s body emotionally.

Together, Jane and Jake have three children who are now grown. Their son, Luke, is graduating from college in New York and so the family all have plans to attend his commencement ceremony. While in New York, Jane and Jake wind up having dinner together. This leads to an affair which continues when they return home. Both of them are enjoying the illicit sex and Jane is relishing her role as the other woman.

To complicate matters we have Adam Schaffer (Steve Martin) who is an architect hired to remodel Jane’s house. He is also healing from a divorce of his own. Jane and Adam hit it off and develop an attraction for each other. This does not sit well with Jake who is hilarious as he goes about spying on Adam’s comings and goings from Jane’s house.

There are several very special moments of comedy in this neat movie! One of them involves a marijuana joint that Jake gives to Jane to keep so that they can share it later. Jane is feeling nervous about a family party that will have both Jake and Adam in attendance and so she takes a hit from the joint. Adam shows up for their date and finds Jane on a high. She offers him a hit and now both of them are high which leads to very funny consequences at the party.

Another moment that had the audience howling involved Jane and Adam sharing a computer video conferencing session during which she is helping him discard some of his out of date clothes. They decide to take a break and resume their video conference in a few minutes. Jane’s computer is left on her bed while she goes into the bathroom. Now for the funny part! Jake sneaks into the bedroom and decides to entice Jane by getting naked and positioning himself on her bed using the computer to cover his private parts – completely unaware that the machine is sending this image to Adam. Jane returns and, seeing Jake, screams. Adam also returns to his computer and gets a MOST unwelcome view! Realizing what is happening, Jake jumps off the bed and bends over as he stumbles giving Adam and the audience yet another unwelcome but totally different view! They play this scene out to excellent effect and copious laughs.

I will leave the ending and just how things sort themselves out for you to enjoy when you see this movie. The audience and I appreciated the warm moments and especially the laughter which was offered in abundance!

Quotes from It’s Complicated
Watch It’s Complicated right now for $3.99 on Amazon.com Video on Demand
Watch It’s Complicated free with a Netflix trial subscription
Buy It’s Complicated on DVD from Amazon.com

Fatwayne’s Rating  -    -