Oh, Reese. She has a good string of roles in the 90s with Pleasantville, Cruel Intentions and Election. All of them are different movies that used her talents quite well as both a comedic and dramatic actress. However, her string of movies in the 2000s has been fairly inconsistent with strong performances and some duds which is not her fault. She is always a ray of sunlight when she is on-screen as she has an infectious smile and has a nuanced quality. Even though she is good here, I felt like it's really the script that is the problem. It felt more like a TV episode from a home network with the flat dialogue and the underdeveloped characters.
So, the movie starts in a Father of the Bride sort of way with a voiceover which Alice (Reese Witherspoon), an interior design businesswoman, was married to Austen (Michael Sheen) and had two kids but separated. Alice moved away from New York to Los Angeles with her kids in her father's home. We flash forward to Alice's 40th birthday in which she is crying gin the bathroom and Isabel is worried about her mother but she assures her daughter that there is nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, we meets brothers Harry and Teddy (Pico Alexander and Nat Wolff) and their friend, George (Jon Rudnitsky) are kicked out of the motel due to not paying the hotel money. They are there to expand their short film, which was a hit on the festival circuit, into a major feature movie. Harry is confident that they will find a place to stay. While out with her friends for Alice's birthday, they meet the guys and they all go to Alice's as Harry and Alice make out until Harry barfs from the alcohol consumption and passes out. The next day, Lillian (Candice Bergen), Isabel and and Rosie, Alice's daughters come back and Lillian asks who all these guys are.
After an important job interview with a rich, potential client, Zoey Bell (Lake Bell), Alice returns home and finds the guys still there. But, she avoids it and talks to Lillian about film. However, Lillian tells Alice that they have no place to stay and they are talented guys that could provide greatness to their work. Alice is hesitant but allows the three guys to stay but one condition is that nothing romantic should ever happen between herself and the guys especially Harry.
Um, boring. There are no interesting characters just appeal from the actors because that is what they are marketing: charm with such regal set design that is set for a fantasy drama. It is a formulaic TV movie that you can see on Hallmark or on Lifetime that basically gets you to sit on your couch and drink wine and get drunk. Reese Witherspoon is lovely but her character was a bit one-dimensional and the romance between her and Pico Alexander is nonexistent in my opinion. There are two different movies going on and to get even worse, it gets crowded in the second half where Michael Sheen's character comes back to revisit their marriage. It feels like that this movie had a false truth to their movie, that they were not as confident with their material and then to suddenly shift to a different tone of such fulfillment and sentimentality that it becomes an OK movie to a nearly awful movie.
Director Hallie Meyers-Shyer, daughter of Nancy Meyers and Charlie Shyer, tried her best. My only problem is that nepotism is noticeable here because she knows that Meyers is a solid romantic comedy director. I liked the majority of Meyer's movies because she does not leaves as much romantic comedy cliches and also you like the characters. Here, it seems that Hallie Meyers-Shyer did not grasp that concept as well, and there is a good movie in there somewhere involving a passion for movies, instead she lets the cliches and montages go and they keep piling up. There are one too many montages in this movie. It felt like a Valentine's Day ad at times with people reacting. I mean, the climax is in a kids' play. There's not much passion in this movie and there's not much creativity. Instead, we get a formulaic romantic comedy with crowded storytelling, terrible dialogue and stock characters that add to a predictable conclusion.
*1/2
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