Entertainment

Status update: It’s cheesy

Slightly less expensive-looking than James Cameron’s epic, Nancy Meyers’ romantic farce “It’s Complicated” is basically “Avatar” for women of a certain age, with blond highlights replacing blue skin.

This is a consumerist rather than an ecological fantasy, with divorced empty-nester Meryl Streep plotting an addition to a La-La Land house slightly smaller than Grand Central Terminal while being fought over by remarried ex-hubby Alec Baldwin (funny) and architect Steve Martin (not).

Yes, it coulda had more laughs, but in the spirit of seasonal good cheer, let me predict that the best-chocolate-croissant-making montage in Hollywood history is going to help this one clean up at the box office.

Reviewing movies like this makes me feel like the proverbial piano player at a brothel, but I do have some advice for the guys.

Encourage your significant other to make this a girls’ night out unless you find the idea of Baldwin posing nude for an unwitting audience during a Skype session the height of hilarity.

Actually, Baldwin — in his first lead in a mainstream movie in 15 years — is the funniest thing here, as an unhappily married 58-year-old lawyer with a harpy wife (Lake Bell) trying to get pregnant and an obnoxious young stepson.

A few drinks before their son’s college graduation is all it takes to lure Streep — who divorced him a decade earlier after he cheated with his now-wife — into bed with this scuzzy character.

We’re told that Streep’s character hasn’t had sex in a very long time, but it still takes every ounce of the acting skill that brought Streep a raft of Oscar nominations to make this remotely credible.

This turn of events so shocks their silly grown children — the son, his two sisters, plus an annoying wuss (John Krasinski) who appears to be romantically involved with one of them — that they huddle in bed together for much of the movie.

The screenplay by real-estate-porn specialist Meyers (“Something’s Gotta Give” was better) is distantly derived from Noel Coward’s classic farce “Private Lives,” not that even his estate’s lawyers would want to take credit for it.

Baldwin’s romantic rival is a recently divorced architect played by Martin. Perhaps the movie’s most unintentionally funny line comes when Streep (who runs an upscale bakery) looks at his drawings and exclaims, “Finally, a real kitchen!” It’s hilarious (except, perhaps, to the recently laid-off) because the kitchen she already has is bigger than most Manhattan apartments.

Martin seems uncomfortable in this thankless role, except when he and Streep cut loose in a reefer-smoking scene that got this otherwise innocuous comedy slapped with an R rating.

Streep and Baldwin, though, seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves — perhaps more than those unwilling to suspend disbelief will — whether they’re mugging, slamming doors or yelling at each other.

I left “It’s Complicated” with one burning question: How much did Bed, Bath & Beyond have to pay Universal to get an Oscar winner to say its name in a line of dialogue?

lou.lumenick@nypost.com