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This isn't for you, kids. It's not a reflection on your generation. Or of it. You'll have your own versions and all that goes with it. For the rest of us, the spoilers that follow won't matter—you know the theme and variations already from lives that touch your own lives directly or through others close to you.
This is the take of Jane and Jake, their three kids, his second wife and her brat kid, an architect, a family come together to celebrate a graduation, pointedly ignoring ten years of being split asunder, a reunion of sorts, an opening up of a home and virtual open heart surgery.
Jane is Meryl Streep, the Schrödinger's cat actor who is both her character and herself at the same time, who lives in a modest, little Santa Barbara bungalow now the home of Harry and Meagan, where her youngest is off to college. Jane is effortlessly flowing back and forth from her patisserie-cafe and her plans to expand the house.
Jake is the almost sort-of-lovable Alec Baldwin. He is a made-man lawyer with a hot young wife and a spoiled brat from her previous plus-one in tow and a fierce demand for a matched set. She is draining Jake of his vital bodily essence alternately sending him to the fertility clinic to give it up for in vitro and keeping him performing in synch with her closely monitored ovulation schedule.
Steve Martin, the wild and crazy banjo player as Adam the architect, complements the principals as a conscientious listener to self-help tapes piloting himself through healing from his own divorce while doing deep reads of the 47 emails of Jane's that his partner Peter has passed to him in hopes that Adam can weave together her wishlist for the remodel.
Writer/director Nancy Meyers put this trio in motion with an ensemble including the second wife, three children, a son-in-law to be and wine-drinking friends around the dining table and coffee table.
The set-up is an anniversary party in an impossible scene combining Tuscany with a semi-tropical seaside for friends of Jane and Jake celebrating their 30th. We think at first that the two couples are old close friends and have similarly long-lasting bonds of marriage. Jane completes Jake's sentences. Jake thanks her. We wonder where this is going.
Right up to the entrance of Agnes, the Queen of Sheba. Jake's plus one stalks in with the pace and power of a Panthera leisurely stalking her helpless prey. We don't know if Agnes was the proximal Other Woman or her successor in interest. But she has Jake now, possibly without the pre-nup. While it might sting, Jane is apparently ok with that, possibly through naked will power.
Next, son Luke is to graduate in NYC, bringing everyone into direct contact at the pomp and circumstances cutting to mom alone sitting at the hotel bar waiting to be seated for dinner, abandoned by their children who fly off to help Luke to celebrate his farewell night to the college life.
An illness or sulk renders Agnes hors d'combat. Jake wanders into the restaurant and seats himself next to Jane, where they proceed to drain the bar's cellar. And end up in bed. It's not a one-night stand, and continues when everyone returns to Montecito. Jake Jackson Pollocks closer, Jane is in tension with an opposite polar attraction to Adam, the anti-jerk. Jane and Adam revisit getting stoned after a long, long time away and get down and silly, having too much fun to grow any more intimate than delight in the other's company and easy intimacy.
When Jake arrives unannounced next to find them enjoying dinner that Jane is cooking for Adam in what Jake still thinks of as his home, he huffs and he puffs and ruffles his feathers to their full bristled extent. Adam politely recedes. But Jake doesn't perfect his claim. When the family trips to the covert affair the question naturally comes to the fore—if you two are coming back together what the fuck was the last ten years of our pain all about?
We don't know if they learn that they were the inevitable collateral damage of two lives that merged as well as they could but could not stay melded in one or even in permanently locked struggle for victory. The kids are always the first to know, but also the last to understand.
Jane gently pushes Jake away with a note of gratitude for the resolution of their unfinished business together—yes, they might have made it, but no they aren't going to now. Like all the best stories this is only an ending, not the ending. We do not know, nor do the characters, how the pending story arcs converge or diverge. We don't know if their best date ever experience will continue to bring Jane and Adam closer. Or if Jake leverages new self-knowledge into a second family. Or how the children grow up. The prospective son-in-law Harley is already a grown-up and we may have hope that everyone joins him and Adam at that table.
If your heartstrings do not vibrate from this flic, they are still too stiff to relax into life's long rhythms and you must be patient.
