Director's Spotlight: Nancy Meyers
By Joshua Pasch
June 23, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
My love affair with Meyers’ films began in 1998 with the remake of THE PARENT TRAP. Now for a personal anecdote: when I was 11-years-old I went to the movies with my best friend to see the horror flick Halloween H2O. This was a very adult thing for us to do, and we felt super cool about it. Well I think about three minutes into the movie, an unfortunate soul meets a grisly ending with an ice skate blade to the face. At that moment, my buddy and I turned to each other, and with hardly a word spoken, bee-lined for the exit. My mother and younger brother, merely eight-years-old, went to see the far too childish (by my 11-year-old standards) PARENT TRAP a few screens over. Ashamed, we went and sat with them, and I reluctantly enjoyed every second that followed.
That movie is fantastic. Lindsay Lohan was my peer and I loved her until she became impossible to love. I miss Natasha Richardson almost entirely because of that film. And is there a cuter love story than that of the California nanny and British butler? If there is then I don’t yet know it. Alas, this was the start of my love for Meyer’s style. She has made a career of films that feel airy, delightful, and filled with well-to-do yet somehow sympathetic characters. We’ll skip a review of follow-up feature, What Women Want, a fun farce that is sullied now with Mel Gibson’s since-established reputation. That leaves her most recent three outings, Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday, and It's Complicated. Lets break out our mimosas and enjoy a Sunday review of the frothiest dramedies out there.
Something's Gotta Give
I think a lot of people mix up the two Jack Nicholson starrers, As Good as It Gets and Something's Gotta Give. The mouth-filling generic titles feel similar in the backlog of movie memories for more than just a few people, and I like to think of SGG as AGAIG’s younger, less mature brother. The movie is a two-hour opus that reveals little of actual character growth, or even straight comedy. Instead, we’re treated to weekends on beach house hanging out with our favorite womanizer Jack, and our older crush Diane Keaton. Things happen to them through the course of two hours, sure. There’s a storyline about Jack, intimate with Diane’s daughter, having some kind of heart episode. There’s a young doctor who sweeps Diane off her feet for a little while. Then Jack and Diane get it on John Mellencamp style, there’s another heart incident, someone writes a play about all of this high drama, there’s a trip to Paris, and if I recall correctly, everyone ends up happy. Except Keanu Reeves.
The reason why I summarize the movie's events thusly isn’t because they aren’t fun to watch. It’s just that, they don’t really matter. I don’t need an excuse to watch Jack smoke a cigar and to see Diane behave like Annie Hall. Just invite me to your spacious house in the Hamptons to hang out with them, and I’m there.
And apparently, I am not alone. In early December 2003, SGG opened to a very modest $16 million opening weekend – half of What Women Want earned over a comparable weekend three years earlier. But legs were in the cards for this one, as they are for all Meyers' flicks. Word got around about how much fun Jack and Diane were having and audiences caught on to the tune of $124 million domestically and another $142 internationally. This is rarified air for romantic comedies, and Sony had to wait the requisite three-year Meyer gap for her next holiday offering.
The Holiday
The second in a trifecta of utterly blandly titled movies for Meyers is The Holiday, Meyer’s biggest critical and financial blemish. It is both her lowest grossing and least enjoyable film to date, though it isn’t an outright disaster in either category.
All of Meyer’s movies involve “rich people problems,” but The Holiday is the most egregious on that front and does the least to help us mere financial mortals to relate. We are asked to sympathize with the lonely plights of two women who are down on love. These two women swap homes from glitzy Beverly Hills to sleepy, small town England. In case you didn’t see it coming, both women have trouble adapting to their new settings, then they meet the men of their dreams, and somehow, even with transcontinental lives, everyone makes it work for a happy ending. But the woes of Cameran Diaz’s and Kate Winslet’s love lives aren’t sympathetic enough. The film does win points for a surprisingly loveable performance by Jack Black and for having an awesome B-storyline about an aging screenwriter played by the wonderful Eli Wallach. I would have happily scratched the beyond implausible storyline of Diaz falling for Jude Law in a small London suburb for increased minutes with Wallach’s soft spoken wisecracker of a character.
The Holiday continues Meyer’s’ tradition of featuring incredible eye candy, which helps make this vacation far more watchable than the plot itself. Everyone is good looking (even Black seems less rotund then usual here). The mansion in Beverly Hills is spacious and there’s some transcendent pleasure in watching Winslet lay in what must be the most comfortable bed of all time and learn how to bring down the blackout shades to sleep for endless hours while recovering for jetlag. We all wish our bedrooms could induce that kind of coma.
On the weekend of December 8, 2006 the Holiday had a disappointing third place opening of just under $13 million. The only other “big” opener was Apocalypto, so the step backwards for Meyers had to have disappointed Sony somewhat. Holiday inflation inflated The Holiday enough to get to a respectable $63 million cume. Not an embarrassing figure, but still a full 50% pay cut from her previous effort. The key, though, is that international audiences also eat up Meyers' stuff. This one earned a huge $142 million overseas, seriously picking up the slack. The Holiday also remains a popular rental option and made a killing in the home video market. The beauty of these films, again, is that you get to kind of, sort of, live vicariously through the glamorous lives the main characters, who become relatable because they struggle with love and stuff too! Those are tropes that folks are willing to retry every holiday season from now until eternity.
It's Complicated
With her most recent feature, Meyers went back to the love lives of the older set. The aptly, simply, and stupidly titled It's Complicatedfollows a woman, Meryl Streep, who falls for her ex-husband, Alec Baldwin. That’s already complicated enough, but add in three confused children, the fact that Baldwin’s remarried, and another suitor for Streep played by the casually goofy Steve Martin, well…then it really gets complicated.
The film is flighty fun, again populated by very wealthy people doing wealthy people things – having big graduation parties, planning expansions to their already expansive homes, and getting high and baking in the private kitchen of their own bakery. Again, it’s simple to see why these movies are so successful – who doesn’t want to do those things? The formula is pretty basic and Meyers doesn’t stray far. Swap out Keanu Reeves for John Krasinksi, and trade Nicholson walking in on Keaton changing for Martin accidentally Skyping with Baldwin’s junk. Meyers knows how to put this tidy package together better than anyone.
My chief complaint is that Meyers continues to insist wrapping her neat little packages with a tidy bow by the end of two hours. In The Holiday, that the relationships were extended past the holiday is not plausible, and I resented that it was being passed off like it was. Likewise, the relationships in It's Complicated live up to that title and I would’ve enjoyed the movie just as much with a more ambiguous ending to Streep’s love life. In the end, though, these quibbles mean little. I’ve caught It's Complicated at least two and half times on cable in the last handful of months. I don’t seek it out and I don’t pay too close attention when it’s on. But, like everything else Meyers has directed, it’s another colorful, candy sweet product that I never mind having on in the background.
Released on Christmas Day 2009, this was a return to form for Meyers at the box office. The opening was a solid $22 million and this one took advantage of January’s dearth of quality releases, legging its way up to $112 million domestically, with another $106 million abroad. Few directors can pull an international audience of that size without using excessive CGI and pyrotechnics, making her film's performances all the more impressive.
What's Next
Somehow I’ve been unable to obtain info on what’s up next for Meyers. If I had to make a friendly bet, it’d be that by 2013 we’ll have another charming yarn about the romantic plights of the affluent. Her imprint on film is both simple and instantly recognizable. It’s as identifiable of a tag as lens flare is to JJ Abrams movies or pyrotechnics are to Michael Bay’s pictures. Her films speak to the middle-aged, wealthy women. But if you’re up for giving them a whirl, even if you don’t fit that mold, you may find yourself enjoying them. Full disclosure: I am none of those things.