IT'S COMPLICATED

title: IT'S COMPLICATED
year: 2009
cast: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin
rating: **1/2

There's something very comfortable about IT'S COMPLICATED. The usually serious, multi-Oscar nominated Meryl Streep doesn't dumb-down for comedy. Playing a divorced woman whose spark rekindles for her former husband (married to a beautiful young woman), she plays the role with natural ease. But Alec Baldwin, as the cheating ex who gets more and more invigorated by his former wife through random sleepovers, turns in a somewhat phoned-in performance, sounding like a smooth-talking disc jockey on a late night jazz station. On the peripheral, Steve Martin's nice guy architect character, designing an add-on to Streep's plush home and becoming a potential significant other, doesn't have enough screen time, or motivation therein, to add a needed baseline to the not-so-complicated proceedings: making Streep and Baldwin's sneaky trysts seem like excuses for the duo to keep repeating the same lines: "I can't believe we're doing this" or "Why is this happening?" And during the third act, when Baldwin gets a little too unbelievably clingy... And Streep and Martin spoke marijuana (the always dependable icebreaker device from the 1980s)... the plot derails. But it's Streep alone, holding all the cards throughout, that makes this romantic comedy worthwhile.