Reese Witherspoon’s ‘Home Again’ utterly disingenuous
“Home Again” is a romantic comedy with its heart in the right place.
And that’s just about the only thing it has going for it. It’s facile, disingenuous, artificial in nearly every way.
Well, there is Reese Witherspoon, and that’s not inconsiderable. This is perky, adorable Reese (“Legally Blonde”) as opposed to gritty, awards ready Reese (“Walk the Line”).
But writer and director Hallie Meyers-Shyer has come up with the classic wish-fulfillment broken-family scenario in which things like divorce are cute little inconveniences for beautiful people living in beautiful homes making beautiful decisions that most of us would find emotionally devastating. It’s all so… cute. Yuck. Witherspoon plays Alice, whose life we learn about in a flashback that opens the film that is more interesting than anything that follows. She’s the daughter
of a famous filmmaker. He was successful both financially and critically and is now dead. Her mother, Lillian (Candice Bergen), was an actress who became famous in her husband’s films.
This is a good time to point out the role progeny plays in this film. It’s not fair to compare artists to their parents, but just for the record: Meyers-Shyer is the daughter of Nancy Meyers (“Something’s Gotta Give,” “The Intern” and executive producer on this film) and her father is Charles Shyer (“Baby Boom,” the “Father of the Bride” remake). Romantic comedies are a dominant trait in this family.
Alice has just moved from New York to California, splitting with her music-industry executive husband, Austen (Michael Sheen), and taking their two daughters. They move into the absolutely fabulous home of Alice’s late father, and, as the movie proper starts, Alice is about to celebrate her 40th birthday. By crying into the mirror. Meanwhile, Harry (Pico Alexander), a would-be director; his brother, Teddy (Nat Wolff), an actor; and their friend, George (Jon Rudnitsky), a screenwriter; are trying to land deals after the success of their short film. They’re all about the art, man, as their insistence that their first feature be in black-and-white announces.
Alice’s friends take her out to a bar for her birthday. The filmmaking trio, deflated after a pitch meeting that promises work but perhaps a betrayal of their artistic dreams, land at the same bar.
Harry, who is 27, hits it off with Alice, who’s bombed, and the gang ends up at her house. So here’s the most-interesting part of the movie: It upends the notion of the too-old guy hooking up with the tooyoung woman. Turns out it’s not that compelling when you reverse the combination, either.
Long story short: Lillian convinces Alice to let the guys live in the guesthouse, because OF COURSE there is a guesthouse. There will be bonding and some romance and some heartbreak and reconciliation and pretty much every other ingredient of every lame romantic comedy you have ever seen.
Oh, somewhere in there Alice decides to start an interior-decorating business, in the way that a Kardashian decides to try a new cleanse. Her star client (Lake Bell) is a head case and… seriously, it’s just a weird diversion.
The problem here is that there is absolutely nothing at stake. Everything is always going to turn out OK, because unless a meteor hits Alice’s neighborhood, everything will always turn out OK. This is Alice’s life.
Too bad. Not for Alice or anyone in her orbit, for whom life has the world’s best safety net. But too bad for Witherspoon, who is so good when she’s gritty, and for the movie. “Home Again” is as risk-free as it gets. And as boring as that sounds.