Reese’s film plays out as expected

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DIRECTOR: Hallie Meyers-Shyer CAST: Reese Witherspoon, Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky, Pico Alexander, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes CLASSIFICATION: 10-12PG DLS RATING: ★★✩✩✩

Sure, Alice’s life is “complicated”, or something. But she’s financially comfortable, lives in a lovely rent-free home with her two adorable kids and has three handsome young men doting on her.

Harry, Teddy and George, meanwhile, are so innocuous to begin with that there’s no evolution in their relationship with Alice. It’s one big, happy family from the get-go.

Compounding that lack of tension is the movie’s genericism – its insipid writing and pedestrian direction, as well as the all but non-existent chemistry between Witherspoon and Alexander.

The latter is too slick by half, a cookiecutter cutie without a glimmer of authentic personality.

Witherspoon doesn’t have much to play with, though she gets to let loose in a scene that finds her drunkenly telling off one of her clients, a passive-aggressive yoga-mom snob played with gleeful obnoxiousness by Lake Bell. That character is a welcome shot of mischief in a movie that’s otherwise nice to the point of numbness.

At the same time, the send-up of suburban Southern California privilege feels disingenuous since the whole film – its people, situations and sensibilities – exists within that same realm of clueless entitlement. – The Hollywood Reporter