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Director: Nancy Meyers
Year: 2003
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 8 minutes
An old, wealthy, life-long bachelor Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) has a habit of dating much younger women. One of these young women, Marin (Amanda Pete), takes him up to her mother's vacation home in the Hamptons for a weekend alone. Little did she know her mother Erica Barry (Diane Keaton) was there working on her new play. Despite an early awkward moment, Erica okays them to stay for the weekend. While attempting to have sex with Marin, Harry has a heart attack. His doctor Julian Mercer (Keanu Reeves) forces him to remain in the Hamptons for evaluation. Harry stays at Erica's house, where they grow closer over his recovery, but can he change his bachelor ways and commit himself to an older woman?
Another movie with Diane Keaton where she's elderly and in a relationship with someone she started out hating? Gee, we didn't see that coming.
The main plot of this movie is extremely predictable at best, but it does have its moments of charm here and there, mainly because of Jack Nicholson. Boy, he could charm the pants off of anyone. He's very suave and smooth-talking with an air of confidence lik30-year-old old would in his prime. He seems to know how to talk to young women, and women seem to find him attractive despite his age (read: money???). Nicholson is definitely on his game in this movie. Diane Keaton is as odd and neurotic as ever as Erica Barry. She pretty much plays the same person she always played since "Annie Hall" and has built her entire career on being "that" actress. Sorry, Craig. Keanu Reeves pops up in this movie, too, and well, he's as Keanu Reeves as ever. We don't for one second believe him as a doctor, but it's not so distracting here in between all of the Viagra jokes. And we also don't think he'd ever go for Diane Keaton no matter how much he likes her stupid book. Amanda Peet could have been replaced with any late 20's-early 30's something actress without much notice at all. She's not really in the movie a whole lot, and once Harry has his first heart attack, she's all but packed and out the door.
The film is very poorly paced and drags on far too long. In fact, at one point, only about an hour into its run time, we thought the movie was over, only to discover it had more than an hour left to go! Something's Gotta Give? How about the amount of time that it takes to watch this movie!? 30 minutes could have easily been shaved off of it, again, without much notice. The story is rather predictable on top of it being too long. We know as soon as Erica and Harry see each other for the first time that they are going to connect more than he ever did with any of the younger sex-pots he had dated in the past, including Erica's daughter. Much of the humor in this film is based on age and the age difference between Harry and Marin. Its topics range from heart attacks and erectile dysfunction to Harry being mistaken for Marin's father and more heart attacks. One too many old people jokes, if you ask us. We have no problem when romantic movies use older folks as protagonists, but it has to be smarter, funnier, and more compelling than this movie portrays them to be.
Ultimately, its long-winded run time, awkward interactions featuring Jack Nicholson and someone who could be his daughter and its expected and foreseeable plot hurt our perception of it. It may appeal more to older generations and those who want to see Diane Keaton fully nude (Craig???), but was a bit lost on us, plus, too many heart attack jokes to be funny.
My Rating: 6/10
BigJ's Rating: 5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 71%
Do we recommend this movie: Meh.
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One year ago, we were watching: "The Twilight Samurai"
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