Sept. 8,2017 "Home fires fizzling": Today I found this movie review by Chris Knight in the Edmonton Journal:
There’s a world of difference between a film that gets under your skin and one that just gets on your nerves. Home Again, a mostly inoffensive rom-com, strives mightily to be the former, but time and again I found it bugging me by degrees. If this movie were a first date it would have spinach in its teeth and be constantly checking its phone.
Reese Witherspoon is in full-on Mom mode as Alice Kinney, who has split from her husband (Michael Sheen) and is raising two adorable kids in what used to be her parents’ rambling L.A. mansion. At the urging of friends, she parties heartily on her 40th birthday, and winds up in the arms of 27-year-old Harry (Pico Alexander).
Harry is a filmmaker. So are his two tag-along best friends (Nat Wolff and Jon Rudnitsky). In fact, everyone in this movie seems to be connected with the business – no surprise when you consider that first-time writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer is the daughter of five-timer Nancy Meyers (The Holiday, It’s Complicated) and too-many-to-count Charles Shyer (Father of the Bride).
So that would explain Home Again’s fetishization of the film world; Alice’s childhood home contains a room full of her late father’s notebooks, original screenplays and Oscar statues. And her mother is Lillian Stewart, a renowned beauty and actress much younger than her late husband – or in other words, Candice Bergen playing herself.
After that one crazy night – and with a little prodding from Lillian – Alice decides to let Harry and his friends stay in her guest house. One of the pals is a tech wizard, while the other bonds with Alice’s daughter, helping the kid come out of her shell and become a writer, because really, what other career options are available in this film? Alice tries to be responsible and keep Harry at arm’s length, while on the other side of the country, Sheen’s character frets and wonders whether he and Alice should reconcile.
Meyers-Shyer deserves credit for creating an older-woman-younger-man romantic entanglement and making it both warm and believable, but she squanders this good will on some lazy screenwriting.
To wit; I counted at least five scenes in which characters are clearly speaking to one another, but rather than hear what they have to say and learning more about them, we are treated to a blanket of anodyne pop music instead.
By the third use of this technique, the film started to feel more like a beer commercial than a comedy. And in one instance, though we can’t hear what’s he saying, Harry is clearly talking over a movie the characters are watching projected on a sheet in the backyard. How would you feel if I treated you this way, Home Again?
Thus grumpified, I was less than forgiving when the film introduces a parody of a movie producer only to have one of the characters shake his head and say: “He was a parody of a movie producer.” Well, of course he was!
And this after we get Lake Bell as the parody of an annoying home-décor client, and a scene in which Alice has a parody of a bad dinner date. Not to mention the parody rendition of “will X make it to Y’s school recital on time?”
Meyers-Shyer must have spent a lot of time on film sets growing up – her credits include bit parts in her parents’ movies – but the movie moments in this one feel like someone who only knows the business from afar.
I’m reminded of a scene in the 2008 film Rachel Getting Married, in which two men square off over who’s better at loading the dishwasher. It’s a memorable bit, but it’s also drawn from real life; writer Jenny Lumet is the daughter of director Sidney Lumet, and as a child witnessed her dad and choreographer Bob Fosse having a dish-off during a dinner party. The closest that Home Again comes to that kind of personal touch is a parody of a personal touch. The audience deserves better.
"Like mother, like daughter": Today I found this interview by Michael O' Sullivan in the Edmonton Journal:
With her filmmaking debut, "Home Again," a romantic comedy about a 40ish single mom who embarks on a fling with a much younger man, Hallie Meyers-Shyer proves that she's her mother's daughter.
Mom, in this case, is filmmaker Nancy Meyers, a cinematic powerhouse with a track record of hit rom-coms that includes "What Women Want," "Something's Gotta Give," "The Holiday," "It's Complicated" and "The Intern" — along with a reputation for luxe production values that has earned her the sobriquet of "queen of interior design porn."
No slouch in the romantic comedy biz himself, Hallie's father, and Nancy's ex, is writer-director-producer Charles Shyer ("Father of the Bride").
In "Home Again," there's no mistaking the influence of Meyers, who was a producer on the new film. The story centers on interior decorator Alice Kinney (Reese Witherspoon), who, after an ugly breakup, has moved from New York to the comfortable Los Angeles home she grew up in with her late filmmaker father and retired actress mother (Candice Bergen).
True to the values of a Nancy Meyers movie, that house — which is sure to inspire design lust — takes center stage. It's there that Alice takes in three 20-something filmmakers as lodgers: a sensitive writer (Jon Rudnitzky), a tech-savvy actor (Nat Wolff), and a sexy director (Pico Alexander). The latter becomes, briefly, Alice's boy toy.
Meyers-Shyer, 30, spoke by phone from Los Angeles about her debt to her parents and her desire to make her own way in the Hollywood jungle.
Q: Your mother's influence is apparent, particularly in your film's attention to meticulously curated domestic interiors. I was struck by one scene around the breakfast table that featured platters of bacon on blue-and-white china. It was so mouthwatering and pretty, it was almost distracting. How important is production design to you?
A: Of all possible things I learned about from my mom, food on the table is just the smallest possible thing that she could have taught me. The larger lessons — about having great heroines and great stories, about how warm and inviting her films are and how feminine they are — are the themes I hope I carry on from her, more than anything having to do with set design or food. That said, my film does take place largely in a home — and many of her films do as well — where the house is a big character. I really hope that "Home Again" reflects me and my sensibilities.
Q: After graduating from the New School in Manhattan, you spent a year studying film at USC. But you've said your real education came on your parents' film sets growing up. If you're trying to cut the apron strings, why work with your mother?
A: Carrying on the family business is a hard thing. As a debut filmmaker, you want to feel like you are paving your own way. But there was nobody better to have with me than someone who has been making, for so many years, romantic comedies with strong female characters. The thing I learned most from my mom was about layering my characters and making them nuanced, and not just types.
Q: Alice's parents, like yours, are filmmakers. They seem to have been based on director John Cassavetes and his actress wife, Gena Rowlands. Is that deliberate?
A: You're absolutely right. The character of (Alice's father) is an amalgam of several 1970s filmmakers: Cassavettes; (Peter) Bogdanovich; (Paul) Mazursky. They were my influences while writing the film. The way in which I wanted to portray Los Angeles was inspired a lot by '70s films. I wanted to find a way to infuse that into the story, so I made him a '70s filmmaker. I wanted him to be someone who these three boys — who are true lovers of cinema — would be excited about to thumb through his scripts and photo albums. I consider the movie a love letter to film and Hollywood.
Q: Are you a particular fan of '70s American cinema?
A: Yes, I am. It's my favorite era. I watched a lot of movies from that period for research.
Q: You weren't even born until 1987. How did you fall in love with that period?
A: I went to film school for a bit.
Mostly, though, I watched a lot of movies with my parents. Movies of the '70s feel very grounded and character-driven to me. I love Jack Nicholson. I love Warren Beatty in "Heaven Can Wait" and "Shampoo."
Q: Who do you relate to most in this film?
A: I find a little of myself in every character. I relate to Alice, of course, but also to the three boys trying to make it in Hollywood. I relate to Alice's anxious older daughter, but also to the youngest daughter, because I also have an older sister. I can even relate to Alice's ex, Michael Sheen, back in New York City. I put myself in every character.
Q: Do you perceive a decline — or, as some have said, a crisis — in romantic comedy?
A: It used to be a more commercial genre for studios, for sure, one in which big actors would star, going back to Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It had great actors, major studios, big budgets. But it's not just romantic comedies that have declined, as I see it.
Movies about human beings are not being made as often. They've been replaced by superhero movies, action films. It's not as easy to get a romantic comedy made, but there is an audience for it. "The Big Sick" was a great example, and it showed that people want to embrace the genre.
Q: Is there a gender divide in the audience? Is there something about rom-coms that has ghettoized them as women's films?
A: "Home Again" is a woman's story, through and through. Women do like romantic comedies, but in my experience, men love them, too. I'm excited that an underserved audience is being served in this film.
Q: And that underserved audience is ...?
A: Women.
Q: ... or simply people who don't want to see another movie about space aliens?
A: Absolutely, that, too. One hundred percent.
Q: There's a great line in the film about how, between the three guys who are living in Alice's pool house, she has managed to combine the package into one perfect man: One's her baby sitter, one's her tech-support guru and the other is her lover.
A: I can't take credit for that line. The reference to the brains, the heart and the nerve is from "The Wizard of Oz."
Q: It's a sad commentary on the male gender that it takes three of us to make one whole person.
A: I think "Home Again" is a really empowering movie for men. These are three passionate men who have real interests. It shows men in a really positive way.
Q: There's another funny line, where a sleazy Hollywood movie producer tries to get the "boys" to change their vision for their first movie from a black-and-white art-house drama to a "found-footage love story." Sounds like that one might come from personal experience.
A: Yes. When you're writing, you get to make a little bit of snide commentary. I definitely drew from past meetings with producers.
Q: The guy and the girl don't end up happily ever after. Are you trying to rewrite the rules with your first movie?
A: That's just how the rom-com genre has been characterized. "Home Again" looks and feels like a romantic comedy, but ultimately that's not what this movie is about. It's not about a woman finding a man. It's about a woman finding herself.
My opinion: I don't really like romantic comedies. However, I did like the review and the interview because I learned about screenwriting and storytelling.
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