Say it isn't so: it's been 26 years since Diane Keaton la-di-dah'd her way into the heart of a filmgoing generation with "Annie Hall," the Woody Allen romantic comedy that captured three 1977 Academy Awards for best actress, director and picture.
Keaton's string of whimsical performances for Allen in the '70s briefly overshadowed her dramatic work. But it was the filmmaker's loving, partly autobiographical portrait of his then-muse in "Annie Hall" that established her full-blown, if short-lived, persona as a screwball angel.
Keaton's enchanting, eccentric appearances on Johnny Carson's show reinforced the image and further encouraged young men's fantasies of dropping at her feet. (Not that I'd know anything about that.)
With the actress' shift to intense dramas ("Looking for Mr. Goodbar," Allen's "Interiors," "Reds"), Keaton survived the dreaded Oscar curse and outlasted her pop cachet. But it is very nice, almost three decades on, to fall for her - the iconic Keaton - all over again in another smart and funny love story, this time Nancy Meyers' tale of autumnal passions, "Something's Gotta Give."
Keaton plays 57-year-old playwright Erica Barry, whose grown daughter, Marin (Amanda Peet), is dating 63-year-old businessman Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson). The latter's reputation as a serial seducer of young women precedes him, but that doesn't stop Marin from taking Harry to her mother's allegedly unoccupied beach house to consummate their new fling.
Before they get the chance, however, Erica and her sister Zoe (Frances McDormand) show up, and Harry's day suddenly turns very bad. Erica, especially, dismisses him as a dirty old man, an assessment not undercut by Harry's heart attack while fooling around with Marin.
Ordered by a charismatic doctor, Julian (Keanu Reeves), to rest for a few days, Harry finds himself alone with the appalled Erica. The two endure mutual frustration and even humiliation - the meandering Harry happens upon his naked hostess one night - but over time they grow bemused over their awkward situation and start enjoying each other's company.
Love grows from there, a soulful love that is a pleasure to watch, cathartic and galvanizing, very physical, and based in part on mature acceptance of each other's baggage. The problem is making it last: despite basking in happiness, Harry is set in his ways. The eventual cost of his ambivalence is finding himself - and his truncated romance with Erica - reflected in her latest Broadway hit, while Erica herself surrenders to the much younger Julian's unambiguous wooing.
How these people sort out their relationship woes proves less interesting (and, in some ways, less convincing) than the way love shatters their complacency as individuals. Nicholson has been down this road before ("As Good As It Gets"), though his Harry is one of the actor's more coarse, tongue-tied characters, a frightened bear whose every grunt and sigh sounds like bad plumbing, and who looks faintly ridiculous (mitigated somewhat by success) running a youth-oriented business, i.e., a hip-hop record company.
For Erica, love comes as a tsunami, wiping out assumptions about her emotional and sexual incompatibility with men. Churning with rediscovered rapture, she is devastated by Harry's weak-kneed abandonment; she looks and sounds as if a wild animal were about to descend on her.
Keaton rides the wave beautifully, exploring all sorts of contrapuntal comic and dramatic possibilities out of Meyers' material, often switching tones at breathtaking speed. At one point, her Erica, the celebrated writer, mournfully confesses to Harry that she has found, after a long search, the right word for the pain in her chest: heartbreak. It's one of several moments in which Keaton delivers a knockout blow, yet one quick cut to a later scene finds her teasing other, more bittersweet-funny notes from Erica's bursts of spontaneous grief.
Keaton's authenticity and turn-on-a-dime range, all wrapped in Erica's emerging-butterfly package (no one should look as good as Keaton does in a black dress), makes "Something's Gotta Give" a gladdening, star-driven cinematic experience.
It's far from a great movie: since her delightful remake of "The Parent Trap," Meyers has had trouble (see "What Women Want") integrating charm and ruthless honesty (James L. Brooks' approach) where her characters' motivations are concerned. There are too many shortcuts to happy resolutions and not enough emotional accountability in "Something's Gotta Give"; Julian's mistreatment in Meyers' script, for example, is practically criminal.
There is also a starchiness to some of the film, in bridging or exposition-heavy scenes that are underconsid-ered and underwritten, including a per-functory sequence in which Erica meets her ex-husband (Paul Michael Glaser) and his fiancée over dinner. Several set pieces, though important to the story, look like throwaway eye candy.
No wonder the best bits of "Some-thing's Gotta Give" take place on the beach outside Erica's home, where Keaton and Nicholson are caught, via handheld camera, thoroughly appreciating each other's company. They may be in character, but you can tell neither of these actors would rather be anywhere else than laughing where the waves meet the shore.
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