Home Again ** (2017, Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen, Nat Wolff, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitsky, Candice Bergen, Lake Bell) – Movie Review 

Reese Witherspoon plays 40-year-old single mom Alice, who has just left her English husband Austen (Michael Sheen) behind in New York and re-located to her late Oscar-winning film director father’s lovely house in Los Angeles.

Celebrating her big birthday, she allows herself to be picked up by the handsome young Harry (Pico Alexander), one of one three film-making young best buddy guys, who take the party home to her house. Alice is saved from what might be a terrible mistake when Harry is sick. Next morning Alice’s actress mom Lillian (Candice Bergen) arrives with Alice’s two young daughters who are all quite a bit surprised at this unexpected turn of events.

Lillian is charmed by the three guys, currently homeless, and suggests Alice allows them to move in with her to her separate guest house. And that is exactly what she does.

Nat Wolff.

Nat Wolff (playing would-be actor Teddy), Pico Alexander, and Jon Rudnitsky (playing would-be screen-writer George) mount a charm attack as the guys. Though Wolff is billed above the other two, his role is smaller and much less rewarding. Alexander and Rudnitsky do their stuff well, very well actually.

Pico Alexander.

The movie is written and directed by the 30-year-old Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the daughter of famous writer-directors Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer. It is a warm-hearted and pleasant but patchy and hesitant film, which turns out to be heading nowhere, so it leaves you flat and frustrated afterwards. Films need resolution, and a big finish. This has neither. It drifts along pleasantly enough, but that’s all. It is some fun but not a lot of fun. It has some good observations to make on LA and some not very good ones.

Jon Rudnitsky.

Some of the dialogue is amusing, some is drossy. Some of the characters are amusing, some are drossy. Some of the situations are amusing, some are drossy. An over-critical editor was needed on the screenplay. But, after a slow, talky start, it does engage gear, and keeps tootling along in second or third, motoring gently in the middle lane.

It has a good cast, all of whom do well by it, even Sheen in an unsympathetic, cliched role as the neglectful husband who thinks he might stand another chance, and even Lake Bell in a terrible role as a rich flake who employs Alice as a designer then misuses her. Witherspoon is fine, reasonably appealing, even in this very conservative, cosy role that feel like a script-writer’s concoction rather than a real character. That’s the same with the film. Nothing seems quite real. And, as a fairy tale, it lacks magic.

It just lacks a certain something, anything that could make it special of memorable. As it is, it is just lying there on screen, not doing very much, waiting attractively but passively for an audience to come along and admire it, which may not actually happen in the real world but is more likely to happen in a fairy tale. It is produced by Nancy Meyers, who, you imagine, might have made a stronger film of it.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review 

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