It's Complicated

It's Complicated is like the chocolate croissants that feature prominently in the movie -- warm and sweet, but ultimately not that filling. Director Nancy Meyers is a seasoned pro at depicting a luxurious, upper-class world in which everyone has a kitchen larger than most studio apartments and a home that looks straight out of a magazine. Who better to inhabit this world than the world's greatest living actress and two gifted comic actors? It seems like the formula for success, and, for the most part, it works. Streep is adorable (as are her best friends, played by Rita Wilson, Mary Kay Place, and Alexandra Wentworth) as a woman so sex deprived that she briefly considers whether her friend is right about a woman's "parts" closing up from disuse. Baldwin is almost too perfectly cast as the cocky ex who'd rather bury himself in the arms of his lovely former bride than go home to his shrewish-but-buxom younger wife. And Martin is much mellower than you'd expect, except in a hilarious scene in which Adam and Jane are high on marijuana.

Unfortunately, Meyers doesn't really have much to say in IT'S COMPLICATED. There's nothing all that memorable, despite the stellar cast. Some of the best parts of the movie, in fact, are the Adlers' three grown kids (played by Zoe Kazan, Hunter Parrish, and Caitlin Fitzgerald), all of whom are genuinely believable as siblings who would curl up in bed together after finding out that their parents had slept together but weren't yet back together. John Krasinski is also a scene-stealer as the soon-to-be son-in-law who first discovers Jake and Jane's dirty little secret.