Wouldn't it be nice if we were . . . uh, let's not go there

It's Complicated

Crit

Excuse me a minute--I have to do this right now before I forget, being, after all, a man of a certain age . . . yes, OK, Gabby Adler, daughter of Jake (Alec Baldwin) and Jane (Meryl Streep), is played by Zoe Kazan, whom I have indeed just seen, as the fiction-writing ingenue in Me and Orson Welles.

OK, now that I've taken care of that, let's fill out the scorecard for this tale of December-December romance: the stars are 4+ years younger than I (Baldwin, though his character is 2 years older), 4+ years older (Streep), and 8+ years older (Steve Martin). Gee, I guess it's not as bad as I thought.

As for the film itself, Manohla Dargis singlehandedly overcame my Nancy Meyers skepticism, and I am grateful to both of them, as well as to everyone named above. The dramatic parts ring true if not, for the most part, original, but the comic parts of this are absolutely hilarious, except when Meyers relies, as it seems she must at least once in every film, on some bit of half-assed completely out of place plotting. Baldwin plays . . . well, he plays the only character he has been playing since 30 Rock began, the profoundly self-unaware amoralist, and I for one have no problem with that. And there's a smile Martin scrunches his face into at one point when his character is stoned (it's complicated) that you'd swear was drawn by a caricaturist. Why, hell, I even liked John Krasinski's character and found him funny, which may be a first.

Trailers

• Valentine's Day--Another of those zillion-star romcom omnibuses. Omnibi?
• Robin Hood--Wow, didn't know about this! Ridley Scott directs Russell Crowe, and Maid Marian is . . . Cate Blanchett! Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.
• Leap Year--Hmmm, two February sort-of-holiday movies that I'll wager will not displace the best such ever. This looks probably awful, unless Amy Adams and Matthew Goode can save it.