Love happens

This autumn, it has been refreshing to happen upon two radically different cinematic takes on the adult comedy. Recently Bad Santa took the low road, reveling in its offensive, savage and undeniably funny satiric sleaze.

Choosing the high road is the Diane Keaton/Jack Nicholson star vehicle Something’s Gotta Give. Writer/Director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want) succeeds thanks to the skills of a cast embracing her dialogue as a linguistic fencing exhibition. Nicholson’s clever economy with language and expression has never been sharper. It is Diane Keaton, however, who owns the film and should secure an Academy Award nomination for her role as Erica Barry, a successful playwright emerging from a self-mannered emotional cocoon to discover that age needn’t handicap romantic possibilities.

Jack Nicholson’s Harry Sanborn is a 63-year-old life-long bachelor running a highly successful hip-hop label. His career in the entertainment industry provides him with an endless parade of casual relationships with beautiful, young women. One of these acquisitions, Marin Barry (Amanda Peet), whisks him away for a hedonistic weekend at her family’s beach house in the Hamptons. What promises to be a carnal carnival for Harry implodes with the entrance of Marin’s mother Erica (Keaton) and Aunt Zoe (Frances McDormand), who find him clad in boxer briefs and swinging two bottles of champagne.

Soon, following the awkward introductions, Harry suffers a heart attack. Rushed to the hospital, he is healed by Dr. Keanu Reeves, who winds up lovelorn and captivated by the charismatic Erica Barry. The doctor recommends Harry not be moved and recuperate at the beach house. The plot progresses in a conventional manner that finds Nicholson beginning to question his playboy status and falling for Erica, while Keaton becomes increasingly confused by the infatuated young doctor while realistically acknowledging the growing relationship between her and Nicholson.

Something’s Gotta Give might have been easy to dismiss as a sitcom dressed up in J. Crew and Pottery Barn cottons and linens, yet the film’s logical confidence in giving itself over to Keaton and Nicholson garners redemption. Meyers is not going to shatter any cinematic conventions with her storytelling, yet she should be commended for allowing her main characters to explore their sexuality without embarrassment of age, despite a their lack of the requisite tanned, taut Hollywood stomachs.