Halfway through September already?! Whaaaaa.
(Also, GAH I didn’t send before midnight ET because I came back to check that the movie was still streaming before sending … and then didn’t send! Whoops!)
What did Diane Keaton know about 2020 and when
Today’s update from Toronto, and by Toronto, I mean my bed — I reviewed Good Joe Bell for /Film. This Mark Wahlberg anti-homophobic bullying movie has a great message but flawed execution. It’s still an overall worthwhile project, in spite of its issues.
I got a hearty LOL out of this New Yorker piece and thought it felt relevant to include with today’s recommendations: “Studio Notes on Your Rom-Com Screenplay.” (Have to be able to squeeze laughs out of the pandemic where we can!)
Also in the funny but relevant category, the writers who used to be at Deadspin have launched a new site called Defector that is already crushing the game with pieces like this that I need them to say louder for people in the back: “Be On Time For Things.”
Today’s charitable shout-out comes from, bizarrely, doing research for an upcoming interview I have with a director. I guess this is the good version of going down the Internet rabbit hole because instead of telling you some QAnon crap, I’m telling you about Afrikicks. The organization was founded by Oumarou Idrissa, an Uber driver in California who wanted to give back to West Africa by providing shoes to communities that otherwise see high numbers of people walking barefoot through pain and potential infectious disease.
Now, what you came for…
DAY 187: Something’s Gotta Give (available for free with ads on IMDb TV)
When I first watched Something’s Gotta Give as a teenager, it came weighted with the expectations knowing that it was a favorite of my parents. And, at the time, I felt unimpressed but was also cognizant that it might be something worth revisiting as I got a little older to see if something clicked. I presumed that time would be decades away, not when I was 27, but I’ll take it!
In a town that frequently chases the youngest, the hottest, the newest, Nancy Meyers cuts gloriously against the grain. At this point, she’s practically the poet laureate of older actors looking for representation at the center of romantic comedies. Something’s Gotta Give places Diane Keaton, then in her late fifties, at the center of the film’s amorous entanglements. Her Erica Barry is a divorced playwright experiencing a career renaissance as she largely lets love fall by the wayside. (But this is a Nancy Meyers movie after all, so don’t expect Erica to be some kind of spinster toiling away in an immaculate kitchen.)
The unexpected arrival of her daughter’s much older boyfriend, aging lothario Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson), begins to change things. Harry’s heart attack at Erica’s Hamptons home introduces her to spry doctor Julian (Keanu Reeves), but it also springs her would-be son-in-law into her lap as an unexpected long-term house guest. The two initially mix like oil and water, though with time, Erica and Harry come to enjoy each other’s company … and then some.
Each dealing with their own romantic hang-ups — Erica seemingly giving up on romance, Harry turning himself into a punchline by never dating a woman under 30 — is serious business, though Something’s Gotta Give glides by like a feather on the wind. Meyers is certainly a glossy filmmaker, yet the clean and tidy surfaces are not necessarily the best representation of the tonal balancing act she pulls off here. This is not slight stuff, and that’s not only because there are so few rom-coms that dare center AARP-eligible protagonists (although it certainly doesn’t hurt). Daring to reassess what you want out of life, especially after you’ve lived a good chunk of it, is fairly heavy stuff to pull off with such a light touch!
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall