Home Again

photo courtesy of justjared.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Reese Witherspoon stars in Home Again, a light-hearted romantic comedy. Reese plays Alice, a separated single mom between careers, who (through an unlikely series of events) invites three 20-something starving artists to live in her expansive Los Angeles home. At first she sees the guys as a burden, but between their youthful energy, their interest in filmmaking (which is also her late father’s career), their positive influence on her two daughters, and a budding romance with the most dashing of the three (Harry, played by Pico Alexander), she decides to give them a chance.

     In essence, the movie is a story not about romance in particular, but about aging—and about the compromises that necessarily come along with it. We all have wild youthful dreams, and at some point most of us grow up and sideline them in favor a more practical future. The movie deals with that struggle: the balance between the life we have and the life we envision for ourselves. Both Alice and her youthful visitors have to come to terms with their dreams and the limitations that life inevitably puts on them.

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     Along the way, the movie also attempts to be something of a gender-reversal on a typical romantic situation. Instead of a 40-year-old man dating a sexy, young 20-something, this time it’s 40-year-old Alice who gets to date an exciting, younger man. She enjoys the new energy he brings, and despite her initial qualms, she has to try and let herself off the hook while maintaining her real-world responsibilities to her family. It’s not exactly a feminist manifesto, but it includes that dynamic.

     Looking at strengths and weaknesses, I think Home Again is a decidedly mixed bag. I also think that a lot of the target audience may be willing to overlook its flaws, at least for a one-time viewing. Home Again isn’t anything original or extraordinary, but it does tick most of the rom-com boxes, and that’s what a lot of people will go to the theater to see.

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     In the strength category, we have the cast. Reese Witherspoon is an Academy-award winner, and although this isn’t her best work by far, she’s always a welcome addition. The guys, meanwhile, find a likeable balance between awkwardness and charm. Pico Alexander plays Harry, as mentioned above, and Jon Rudnitsky and Nat Wolff play George and Teddy, respectively. Michael Sheen and veteran actress Candice Bergen round out the cast as Alice’s husband, Austen, and her mother, Lillian.

     Other pluses include light-hearted, family-friendly humor that you expect from a typical rom-com, some decent emotional stakes, and a number of notably well-constructed sequences (several of which center around Alice’s annoying client, an unthinkably obnoxious socialite).

photo courtesy of trailers.apple.com

     On the flipside, Home Again does have its problems. The writing occasionally feels forced or awkward (which probably has something to do with Witherspoon’s less-than-inspiring performance). It can also lean a bit too far into sappy territory, a fault that many rom-com devotees will likely be willing to forgive… except that the  sentimentality sometimes steps on the story. Things get ironed out a bit too easily for all of the complex relational dynamics that are supposed to be going on between its characters.

     One of the main accusations leveled at the movie (an accusation I think is justified) is that the characters live in a bubble of sorts. Their lives are too perfect to be relatable. The movie presents Alice as “struggling,” but with her lavish lifestyle and luxury California home (which, importantly, was inherited from her father), her hot young boyfriend, and the extremely handy (seriously, these guys are wayyy too perfect) new friends living in her home, it’s hard to feel too torn up about it. Alice looks like she’s doing just fine, thank you very much, and for “starving artists,” her guests seem like they’re doing alright for themselves, too.

photo courtesy of trailers.apple.com

     In this respect, the movie draws an interesting parallel to The Holiday, a 2006 rom-com written and directed by Nancy Meyers. (Meyers produces Home Again, which is perhaps unsurprising considering that the film is the writing and directorial debut of her daughter, Hallie Meyers-Shyer.) Both movies feature relatively well-off characters, romantic confusion, and the single-parent-family angle.

     In any case, it’s hard to dispute that there are a lot of affluent characters running around having issues, and that fact just turns some people off before the movie really gets going. But if you can get past that, you should have a pleasant experience at the theaters. 

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