HOME AGAIN

PG-13, 97 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. The name “Meyers” has come to signify a very specific type of film in Hollywood — the shiny, gentle, comforting and aspirational romantic family comedies that writer/director Nancy Meyers has perfected (“Something’s Gotta Give,” “The Holiday,” “It’s Complicated”). Her daughter, Hallie Meyers-Shyer, keeps that legacy alive with her directorial debut, “Home Again.” Call it nepotism, call it a legacy, or simply call it the family business, which always inspires a sense of trustworthiness, quality and consistency. The Meyers aesthetic is strong in this film, with Nancy serving as a producer on this mother-daughter co-production of a very specific cinematic product. Featuring beloved actresses on the other side of 40 enshrined in sun-dappled kitchens as they fret over romantic foibles, a Meyers movie is the kind of domestic escapism that feels like being wrapped in a warm hug. And though “Home Again” clearly shares DNA with her mother’s work, the sharp screenplay, written by Meyers-Shyer, is modern and sly, universally relatable and poignant at times too. Reese Witherspoon stars as Alice, the daughter of the late John Kinney, a revered (fictional) 1970s film director and his actress wife Lillian (Candice Bergen, who gets some of the best lines in the film). She’s recently separated from her husband Austin (Michael Sheen) and returned home to her dad’s palatial pad in LA with her two daughters, trying to get steady on her feet. Before she knows it, her world is rocked again with the arrival of three 20-something men, newly arrived dreamers looking to make it big in Hollywood. Thanks to the meddling of her mom, she decides to let them stay awhile. Unexpectedly, the presence of Harry (Pico Alexander), Teddy (Nat Wolff) and George (Jon Rudnitsky) is just what Alice needs to get her groove back. The guys, working on their first big movie deal, turn out to be fantastic babysitters, home chefs, tech support, even booty calls. How many house husbands does one wife need? Turns out three should cover it. But this isn’t a tale about a gaggle of young Prince Charmings sweeping a princess off her feet. It’s a story of a woman making her own life, out of the shadow of her father, her husband, or her houseguests, and doing it on her own. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency

IT

R, 135 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic. Starts tonight at Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Here’s the good news: Pennywise is as creepy as ever in the new “It .” Thanks to a bigger budget and some improved special effects some 27 years later he really gets the chance to spook the kids of Derry, Maine. Bill Skarsgard (son of Stellan, brother of Alexander) has infused Stephen King’s killer clown with a pathological menace that’s more reminiscent of Heath Ledger’s Joker than Tim Curry’s goofily sadistic take on the character in the 1990s miniseries adaptation. It helps that he’s gotten an upgraded makeup job and a more antiquated (and scarier) costume of 17th century ruffs and muted whites. His teeth are bigger, his hair is less cartoonish, his eyes are more yellow and his mobility has become terrifyingly kinetic. Indeed, the new “It” goes all-out with the horror in Part One of the story, which is focused on the plight of a group of children in the 1980s who are haunted and hunted by a clown only they can see. Things that the miniseries only alluded to are depicted with merciless glee. Did you want to see a gang of bullies cutting a kid’s stomach? “It” has that. Or witness a father looking lustily at his pre-teen daughter? “It” has that too. The bad news is that “It” still doesn’t add up to much. Directed by Andy Muschietti, “It” is a deeply hateful film with the pretenses of being an edgy throwback genre mashup, a la “Stranger Things.” One of the “Stranger Things” kids even has a part in “It”: Finn Wolfhard plays the jokester Richie. The other kids just look like they might have been part of the Netflix series — Jaeden Lieberher as Bill, Sophia Lillis as Beverly, Chosen Jacobs as Mike, Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie, Wyatt Oleff as Stanley and Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben. But unlike, say, “Stranger Things,” or horror films that lull you in with familiar circumstances before introducing the insane, there is nothing remotely relatable or realistic about this setting. This makes it especially hard to connect or engage with the tormented kids. Both the parents and bullies are like fun-home distortions of recognizably cruel humans. — Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press