You can, but you probably won’t want to

Rom-com an unintended parody

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 to be the former, but time and again I found it bugging me. 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 Teddy (Nat Wolff ).

Teddy is a filmmaker. So are his two tag- along best friends ( Pico Alexander and Jon Rudnitsky). In fact, everyone in this movie seems to be connected with the business — no surprise when you consider that first- time writerdirector Hallie Meyers-Shyer is the daughter of five-timer Nancy Meyers ( The Holiday, It’s Complicated) and toomany-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 Oscars. Her mother is Lillian Stewart, a renowned beauty and actress much younger than her late husband — in other words, Candice Bergen playing herself.

After that one crazy night — and with a little prodding from Lillian — Alice decides to let Teddy 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 Teddy 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 olderwoman-younger- man romantic entanglement both warm and believable, but she squanders this on some lazy screenwriting. To wit; at least five scenes in which characters are 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 ad than a comedy. And in one instance, though we can’t hear what he’s saying, Teddy 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! This after we get Lake Bell as the parody of an annoying home- decor 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 film Rachel Getting Married, in which two men square off over 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.