It's Complicated

STARRING Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, Lake Bell
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Nancy Meyers

Meryl Streep a divorcée who’s having an affair with her ex-husband. Alec Baldwin is the ex, who’s married to a much younger woman (Lake Bell). And Steve Martin is the architect remodeling the divorcée’s kitchen who’d like to be an addition to her love life. In other words, It’s Complicated. ”It took a while to come up with that title,” says writer-director Nancy Meyers, veteran of hits like Something’s Gotta Give and What Women Want. ”The first title we had was The Other Woman, but then I decided I didn’t like that one. Then I wanted to call it Divorced — with a poster of a couple in bed — which I thought was sort of funny. But everyone else said it was too much of a downer.”

By any other name, though, It’s Complicated is that rarest of all Hollywood offerings — a grown-up romantic drama starring actors who are old enough to remember a time when grown-up film romances weren’t so rare in Hollywood. ”I know, I know,” says Meyers, ”these sorts of movies don’t get made that often anymore. Even when they work and make money, Hollywood thinks it’s an oddity, rather than that there’s an audience for them.” Martin has a slightly different theory as to why movies like It’s Complicated seem to be an endangered species these days. ”They’re hard to do,” he says. ”Or at least hard to do really well. They have to be really well written; otherwise they come out like studio comedies, which I’ve made my share of. There are only a few people who can do them: Jim Brooks, Nora Ephron, and Nancy Meyers…” There aren’t a whole lot of actors who can perform convincingly in them, either. Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin…