SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE
½ (two and one half stars)
Unchallenging fluff.
Running time: 125 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, brief nudity and strong language). At E-Walk, Loews 34th St., Kips Bay, others.
NOBODY does lovable flibbertigibbet better than Diane Keaton – and it’s fun to watch this grown-up actress revisit her “Annie Hall” persona in Nancy Meyers’ lightweight wish-fulfillment fantasy, “Something’s Gotta Give.”
But Keaton’s overamped girlishness, and the adolescent shenanigans she engages in, make a mockery of this overlong romantic comedy’s stance as a celebration of mature love.
No matter how many times her successful, middle-aged playwright, Erica Barry, is described by others as “flinty,” “formidable” – “macho,” even – her giggles and blushes and operatic wails demonstrate otherwise.
When Erica starts agonizing over whether a single tryst makes the equally grown-up Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) her “boyfriend,” “Gotta Give” wanders into territory more suited to an episode of “The O.C.”
What laughs there are to be had from this broad and unsophisticated comedy come courtesy of the wolfish Nicholson, who happily sends up his real-life fondness for dating younger women and who, at 66, has turned into a master of the comic pratfall and exaggerated double-take (although he really should have stopped short of baring his butt in a drafty hospital gown to get a laugh).
His Harry, who runs a thriving hip-hop record label, has never dated a woman over 30. When we first meet him, he’s escorting the latest in a long line of uncomplicated hotties to the Hamptons for a dirty weekend.
But the sexagenarian womanizer has a heart attack before he’s able to consummate his affair with Marin (a winning Amanda Peet), conveniently removing a potentially icky impediment to his romance with her mother, Erica.
For, yes, this is the boomer-friendly premise of writer-director Meyer’s dippy stab at the well-plowed terrain of
sexual politics – that a menopausal woman with wrinkles and life experience can be sexy and desirable.
And not only to her peers – the hot thirtysomething cardiologist who treats Harry at the hospital (an unusually warm, pleasantly low-key Keanu Reeves) also falls under the spell of Keaton’s 55-year-old divorcee.
The first half of this frothy movie is a lark, as Erica and a recuperating Harry, trapped together in the former’s gorgeous Hamptons beach house, warily circle each other before succumbing to the inevitable.
But it’s all downhill from there as Meyers (“What Women Want,” “Baby Boom”) runs out of ideas and resorts to piling endless obstacles in the way of the mature lovebirds.
There’s a bright spot in the brief reappearance of Erica’s cool, sarcastic younger sister, Zoe (a sinfully underused Frances McDormand), but the sparkling presence of old pros Nicholson and Keaton is the only engine still ticking over by this stage.
This weirdly titled film is terribly pleased with itself for being “brave” enough to show a love affair that incorporates discussions about Viagra and shortsightedness. (“Aren’t we cute?” Harry reminds us as he and Erica rendezvous for a late-night kitchen snack in their comfy bathrobes).
Meanwhile, the younger players are contemptuously dismissed: Peet’s Marin gets fobbed off with an unsatisfying, cop-out “happy ending” and Reeves’ poor lovestruck doctor is left to wander off alone into a cold Paris night.