You’ve killed love, Witherspoon . . .
Home Again (12A) Verdict: Needs some heart
HERE’s yet another romantic comedy about entitled, affluent, attractive, white people living in Los Angeles, in which the children are dazzlingly precocious and the adults behave like children.
that would be forgivable if it were smart, engaging or funny. But mostly it isn’t. It is populated by characters who make only tangential contact with real life as most of us understand it, and it feels like a confection from start to finish.
that’s a shame, because there is plenty of talent on show, starting with Reese Witherspoon, who plays Alice, recently relocated to LA from New York with her two young daughters and newly separated from her English music executive husband (Michael sheen).
At the start of the film, Alice is turning 40 and bawling in front of the bathroom mirror (naturally). But things look up when she falls for a cute (if rather slimy) younger man, Harry (Pico Alexander). soon, he and his two male friends, all aspiring film- makers in their mid-20s, are living at her place. It is quite a place. Alice’s late daddy, whose home she has inherited, was a famous film director. this might explain why Alice only toys with her job as an interior designer.
It also sheds some light on the provenance of Home Again, for its writerdirector is one Hallie Meyers-shyer, barely out of her 20s herself, but the daughter of Hollywood’s rom- com powerhouse Nancy Meyers, who brought us the Holiday, It’s Complicated and something’s Gotta Give.
With her mother on board as producer and a fine cast assembled, Ms Meyers-shyer can hardly go wrong — and yet she does. Home Again, while never exactly unwatchable, is like one of her mum’s films with the heart and lungs removed.