Soft-furnished Hollywood satire that’s too innocuous by half
Life lessons and throw-cushions pile up without pause in Home Again, which stars Reese Witherspoon as a home decorator going through a rocky patch. She’s Alice Kinney, the daughter of a famous filmmaker. She has inherited his Hollywood mansion, has a thriving career and two lovely daughters. On the husband front, things have hit a bit of a wobble: he’s a bearish music executive played by Michael Sheen, they’ve separated, and being single at 40 is not Alice’s style in the least.
Study the name of the writerdirector, Hallie Meyers-shyer, and significantly more becomes clear. She’s the youngest daughter of Charles Shyer (Baby Boom, Father of the Bride) and Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, It’s Complicated). Her parents have always specialised in aspirational romcoms with a keen eye for soft furnishings. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree – in fact, it seems wedged between two upper boughs.
Meyers-shyer is 10 years younger than her heroine, but clearly identifies with being the scion of Hollywood royalty, and has written a story that lets her vaguely satirise the industry. On a rare night out celebrating her birthday, Alice befriends three young guys (Nat Wolff, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitsky) who are trying to get their first feature developed. She starts an on-again, off-again thing with Alexander (the one who looks most like a male gazelle) and, before you know it, all three have taken up temporary residence in her guesthouse.
Sheen’s character finds it all too weird for words but, despite their bro-ey, high-fiving ways, the trio are surprisingly good value, available for spontaneous childcare, puppy love on demand, and fixing kitchen cabinets. If they were just a little shorter and more numerous, the movie would be a yummy-mummy edition of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, brought to us by Good Housekeeping.
There’s something almost ruthlessly innocuous about it. As is the Meyersshyer way, barely a jolt of real-world difficulty intrudes. Alice has a subplot where one of her new clients, played with fabulous disregard by Lake Bell, pooh-poohs her skill set and exploits her as a kind of home help. Reese Witherspoon, as she’s eventually moved to point out, is not the help. There is then the deeply poignant scene where her young beau is trapped in a work drinks situation and leaves her flying solo at one of her own soirées. The sad orchestral swellings make you wonder if they used a million of the world’s smallest violins.
No one who just wants to be pampered by an escapist fantasy of first-world privilege will have a particularly bad time. There’s some nice enough acting, especially from Saturday Night Live’s Rudnitsky as the smartest of the Young Turks. The tug of war between Sheen and Alexander over Alice’s affections is lightly amusing. Lake Bell’s self-absorbed mannerisms raise frequent smiles.
What’s impossible, though, is buying into Alice as anything but a Mumsnet cover girl, a thinkpiece fabrication of second-wind womanhood. And much of this is Witherspoon’s fault. Her panto boo-hoo routines are as silly and confected as her newly liberated, who’d-have-thought-it smiles are scrunchy and exasperating. Literally the most suspense to which the film exposes her is whether these skittish live-in millennials will show up on time for her 11-year-old’s school play.
On no level does Home Again make Witherspoon suffer for her art. But hey, sometimes what you most need is a well-remunerated star vehicle that doubles as a two-month spa retreat. And who could blame you?