‘It’s Complicated’ neither complicated nor original

By Steve W. Schaefer

No new movie opened this last weekend, so I had to go see a film that had opened the week before. I selected “It’s Complicated.”

There are action films; there are horror films; and there are chick flicks. But “It’s Complicated” is another kind of movie: geezer pleaser; a film aimed at the over-the-hill gang (my demographic, I am forced to admit).

As the audience tottered in, I had a sinking feeling. These are the kind of folks that think films are not being made for and about them. And they were eager to get a chance to make up for the oversight.

And nearly everybody in the audience loved the antics of Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep and Steve Martin. And I was deeply moved myself; moved to leave. The audience roared while Alec and Meryl (playing a divorced couple) got drunk and slept together after a separation of 10 years; while Meryl bragged about her reclaimed sexual adventures to her fellow senior gal pals; and Meryl got high (and incredibly silly) by smoking a joint.

The gag was that Meryl tried to keep her “affair” with the father of her three adult children a secret maybe because Alec Baldwin’s character had remarried to a bodacious (buxom) youthful knockout. When it rains, it pours because Steve Martin, playing Meryl’s architect, falls in love with Meryl’s character and pines for her big time.

Torn between two lovers, geriatric Meryl is in a quandary.

Watching these WASPish characters bored me. I think the comedy was corny and strained, like an amateurish sketch from Saturday Night Live, or in this case, Saturday Evening Post Hardly-Alive.

Steve Martin and Meryl Streep acting high on pot (at a party) scared me. What a perfect excuse to never do drugs. They should make a PSA with it. This is talent; this is your talent with a cheesy script and clunky direction.

I suppose I would find this film high-larious if I had been divorced and hit the dating circuit in middle-age…if I had known their pain. I wasn’t and didn’t, but folks watching the film with me apparently lived it and found all of the jokes real knee-slappers.

Certain folks get a lot of grief for talking to the screen during horror films. Well, they have nothing on these fogies: they shouted out the obvious to the screen and then wheezed out a guffaw.

While they chortled, I shed a tear or two. Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin deserve better vehicles than this. However, I know I am in a tiny minority. The Golden Girls crowd will find this movie a jewel; a masterpiece of comedy. Couples flush with Social Security cash will see this after the early bird specials and be much pleased by the experience.

Like “Mamma Mia!,” the DVD will be played with much wine gulping and giddy giggling among the divorcees and single-for-the-night gal pals. And many of my readers will be appalled and disappointed that I hated “It’s Complicated.”

To me, it isn’t complicated at all.

“It’s Complicated” deserves two bow ties out of five.