There is a point in Something's Gotta Give where the entire movie seems to come together in a mature, poignant scene. Erica Barry (Diana Keaton), famed playwright, stands on the porch of her Hamptons home, and watches wistfully as famed bachelor Harry Langer (Jack Nicholson) departs after their romantic tryst. It seems like the perfect time to end the story, with both characters having grown and developed. And isn't that what good fiction is all about?
But it's only been 90 minutes. Rather than ending on the right moment, the film goes on. And on. And on. It goes on for another 44 minutes, and each one feels like you're stuck in the grocery check out line behind the slowest senior in the world, digging in her purse and mumbling about the Summer of Love.
Something's Gotta Give is post-menopausal masturbation for the far end of the baby boom set.
Langer is an unrepentent bachelor with an eye for young, beautiful women. This makes him a pig. How do we know that? Because Barry's sister, woman-studies Prof. Zoe Barry (a skeletal Frances McDormand), tells us so. Langer is dating Erica's daughter, the radiant Marin (Amanda Peet) when all meet up in the Hamptons. One heart attack later, Langer is confined to the house for a week of bed rest. Dr. Julian (Keanu Reeves) falls in love with Barry, and Barry warms up to Langer. I won't spoil the rest of the story but the fact that Reeves' character doesn't have a last name should be a clue.
The movie was written and directed by Nancy Meyers, the auteur who brought us What Women Want. Am I the only one who is surprised that it's a woman who keeps making movies that are degrading to women? In her attempts to be a cinematic Jane Austen, studying the social mores of upper-class New Yorkers, Meyers instead proves herself to be a Neil Simon wannabe, regurgitating jokes that really weren't that funny back in the early '70s. The script's humor is as obvious and clumsy as Prof. Barry's diatribe. But by comparison to the dialogue, the humor is positively Wildeian. At one point, Keaton's character repeats a line of Nicholson's, and then asks "What does that mean?" What, indeed.
The 57-year-old Keaton is earnest in her role, and frankly, is a knock out in her brief nude scene. But her character is so ridiculous, so over the top, especially when distraught, that she never feels like a real person. Nicholson, meanwhile, sent the bulk of his performance in via online messaging, that is when he's not mugging for the camera. There is the first moment when Langer cries—he says for the first time in his life—when Nicholson manages to nail his mark, but by the third time we see him sniffing, I wanted to hand him a hankie and turn away in disgust.
Reeves ... well, let's just say that Reeves was perfectly cast as the semi-computerized Neo in The Matrix. Here, he's pretty and attentive, which is all the role asks of him. Peet is no better, playing the part of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, who later meets a man, falls in love, marries and becomes pregnant in the space of three months.
Of course, the main point of all this is the movie's moral message. What's good for the gander is not good for the goose, and really, the gander should knock it off, too. It's wrong of Langer to enjoy himself by romancing young women, even if all either want is to just have some fun. It's wrong of Barry to enjoy herself by being romanced by young men, even if all either want is to get married. The proper thing for grown-ups to do is stick to people their own age, no matter how dissimilar they are. After all, what's a romance without romance.
Oh yeah, that would be this movie.