It's Complicated

I once read a review of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic in which the reviewer claimed that Anderson created not films, but worlds. This was no doubt due to the almost pathologically quirky characters Anderson places in seemingly foreign locales. Anderson's characters all display a knowledge of these worlds, never questioning their existence or functionality.
Filmmaker Nancy Meyers creates worlds for her characters as well, albeit less esoteric. Meyers' worlds are moneyed, tasteful and hyper-educated. Her characters (particularly the women) are smart, attractive and most importantly, empathetic. Somehow, Meyers manages have you rooting for her heroes and heroines, despite the fact that they have more advantages than they know what to do with. It's Complicated is no exception, with it's glossy Santa Barbara setting and psychologically savvy singles. Meryl Streep is Jane, a fifty-ish bakery owner who has been divorced from Jake (Alec Baldwin) for ten years. After being left by him for the proverbial younger woman (blandly played by Lake Bell. Tangentially, how dumb is that name?), Jane evolves into a woman comfortable with being alone. That is, until she falls back into bed with her ex in a drunken torrent. She and Jake begin a torrid affair which leaves Jane fraught with guilt and confusion. Streep plays Jane magnificently, as she does every single role she has ever tackled. Seriously. I know there are critics who find Streep too technical in her approach, but they are either suffering from crippling envy or have been denied entry into art school by someone who looks exactly like Streep.
We see Jane glow in the embers of naughty, verboten sex with her former husband. She is ambivalent, sure, cagey and defiant all at the same time. Streep also delivers the comfortable joy she has been displaying more readily in her last few roles. Conversely, Baldwin disappoints. After Baldwin realized his beefcake status was hell and gone from Cartegena, he began to deliver some of the funniest television performances since Milton Berle donned a dress. But in this film, Baldwin mugs and minces and looks to be enjoying chewing scenery more than food. For Baldwin, that's saying something. It feels as if Baldwin was so flummoxed by acting with Streep that he hides behind a smug persona rather than really going deeply into the character of Jake.
The overriding feeling one gets while watching one of Meyers films is that she is a pro. A notorious perfectionist, Meyers involves herself in every detail of making a picture. While this creates a very uniform feel, it can occasionally render a movie over-produced and slick. Meyers is still a phenom, being the only female hyphenate in Hollywood who works continuously. This is a monumental feat, particularly in an industry that feels that the only demographic worth targeting is the 14 to 24-year-old male. My Comment has to do with the pervasive attitude in Hollywood that the only bankable stories are the ones about men. I have been told dozens of times to simply change my female lead characters to males if I want to have any shot at selling a script. Across the board, agents, producers and heads of production want nothing to do with a script that has a female lead because women can't pull in as much as the box office as men. What about Juno, you say? The studio greenlit Juno because it only cost 7 million dollars to make, thus, they didn't have to put Angelina Jolie (the most expensive but also most bankable female star today) in it in order to insure that people would show up. When Juno grossed more that 230 million dollars worldwide, one would think that the powers that be would open their minds about female-driven scripts. Not so.
So now that Nancy Meyers has directed a film with a 60+ female lead that has grossed 99 million dollars worldwide, will you boys listen to me roar a bit?