The characters in Nancy Meyers’ films usually lead idealized lives many of the good burghers of this country find appealing. This would explain why her movies, which include “What Women Want” and “Father Of The Bride,” have grossed upwards of a billion dollars — ordinary people with extraordinary fancies, women especially, seem to really enjoy spending 10 bucks on a movie so that they can watch the idle rich (who routinely spend 10 bucks on, say, a small bottle of designer water) engage one another in lots of psychoanalytic babble while picking at exotic field greens and sipping unpronounceable French wines in expensive restaurants. For two hours, the hoi polloi stare at the screen and, in some small way, attain the unattainable.
And so it goes in Meyers’ latest flick, “Something’s Gotta Give,” which features Jack Nicholson as an obscenely wealthy, chubby, balding playboy who shacks up exclusively with young models (we all know one of THOSE guys, right?). Diane Keaton co-stars as a fabulously successful playwright with a spread in the Hamptons that seems to have been plucked from the cover of House Beautiful. Amanda Peet plays Keaton’s daughter, a fine art auctioneer at Christie’s, and Keanu Reeves serves as the theater-loving studly doctor who’s got the cure for whatever’s ailing his pecunious patients. All of them speak French, too. Not that these people don’t have problems, mind you. Everyone in a Meyers pic has problems. Nicholson can’t commit, and his ticker’s not right. Keaton’s a lonely divorcee who is ultimately forced to choose between a hot young physician and one of the world’s all-time smooth operators. Peet’s looking for love in all the wrong places (plus, she loses Jack to her mother). And Reeves, well, he ain’t in The Matrix anymore.
The story goes like this: Jack’s dating Amanda, meets her mom, falls for mom. It’s paradise. Then it’s paradise lost. Then it’s paradise found again. There are lots of jokes about May-December romances and erectile dysfunction, and many of them are funny. Jack and Diane both get naked onscreen, which is also funny in an uncomfortable sort of way. Frances McDormand, who is always great, plays Keaton’s sister — a women’s studies professor, of course — and Jon Favreau is on board as Nicholson’s trusted assistant.
If two hours of that sounds to you like a good excuse to drop 10 bucks — and YOU know who you are — then, by all means, see “Something’s Gotta Give.” (Rated PG-13 for sexual content, brief nudity and strong language. Running time: 117 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 12, 2003. Read the original PDF.