Hopeless Romantic Movie Review: It’s Complicated
I love the title of this movie, because it’s one of my brother’s favourite phrases (honestly, he despises it). It’s also a relationship status update on Facebook.
Anyways, the premise of this movie is that Jake Adler (Alec Baldwin) is attempting to re-kindle the spark with his ex-wife, Jane Adler (Meryl Streep), after being divorced for ten years.
What led to the demise of this happy home was Jake having an affair on Jane after 19 years of marriage, then marrying the adulteress six months after the divorce was final. The further complicate matters, his new wife Agness (Lake Bell) previously left him, had a fling with another man…which produced a child, Pedro, then came back to Jake.
Not to mention the architect working on an addition to Jane’s house Adam (Steve Martin), trying to move on as Jane’s potential love interest and get over a messy divorce, all at the same time.
Told you it’s complicated…man, they weren’t kidding!
The main portion of the movie involves the youngest son Luke (Hunter Parrish) graduating from college. Once the whole family meets in New York, a chance encounter in a hotel bar finds the main couple reliving the good times of their failed marriage, ultimately ending up in bed together. The rest of the movie involves Jane coming to terms of becoming the person that she despises (an adulteress herself now), and Jake pursuing her in earnest. We learn as the movie goes along, that the home situation with Jake isn’t going as well as he had hoped for. To add to the stress, Agness wants to have another child with Jake, so we get to see a couple of rather humourous visits to the fertility clinic. The main couple’s grown children add depth to the already rich story, especially the future son-in-law Harley (John Krasinski).
All in all, it was a very well written movie, full of comedy and very raw, touching vulnerable moments to which you sympathise with the two main characters. On a personal note, I can relate to this movie well, because it highlights a lot of what I’ve gone through with my ex in our post-divorce relationship. This movie shows us that relationships nowadays are anything but conventional, yet they all have a singular purpose…to find and nuture love.
By the way, the movie doesn’t end how you think it does, and that’s rather refreshingly in this day and age of cookie-cutting moviemaking. Definitely worth recommend seeing.
