(2009) Director/writer Nancy Meyers's romcom may simply be more appealing to the other 50% who've gotten divorced. From the outset I felt no sympathy for Jake Adler (Alec Baldwin, not one of my favorite actors, though he's well suited to this role) and began rooting for Adam Schaeffer (Steve Martin) as soon as he made his appearance.

With Gabby's departure for college, all three of Jane Adler's (Meryl Streep) children are gone from the nest, leaving her alone in her Santa Barbara house. Ten years after her divorce from Jake, following 19 years of marriage, she meets with Adam ("You actually understood what I wanted"), the architect (going through the process of a divorce) in charge of planning her kitchen remodeling and addition.

On a visit for a consultation about a saggy eyelid with Dr Moss, a plastic surgeon, she finds herself in an elevator with Jake and his young wife Agness (Lake Bell), displaying a tiger tattoo on her shoulder, and their five-year-old brat Pedro on their way to the fertility center. Jane's friends Diane, Trish, and Joanne warn her that not having sex isn't healthy (citing an example of a woman whose vagina shrunk away to nothing), so use it or lose it.

Staying at the same hotel in New York City for son Luke's college graduation, Jane comes upon Jake (his wife and son remaining in California) in the bar; they have fun drinking and dancing before going to bed together. "This is the dumbest thing two people have ever done," she tells her ex as she vomits into the toilet. For the first time in a decade the original five Adlers plus Lauren's fiancé Harley (John Krasinski) sit down together for a meal and enjoy one another's company.

Back home when Jake shows up again at his former wife's residence, Jane asks: "Are you, like, what, unhappy at home? Does she not understand you? Or did you just want to know what it would be like with someone my age?" While Jane ("I'm now the other woman") feels what they are doing is "so wrong," Jake the lawyer defends their affair because "our problems went away" and the sex is so much looser and sexier.

As Adam and Jane share her croque monsieur - Jane's a restauranteur - and Jake spies on them through the window, in reply to Adam's remarking on how she and her ex-husband seem to have it figured out, Jane replies: "We're not as figured out as you think." When Adam leaves, he rushes in: "I've never really learned how to live without you."

Feeling guilt and fear, Jane sees her shrink of eight years, Dr Allen, for advice: "You may learn to view the world in a different way." While Harley and Lauren are attending a pre-nuptial conference at the Stanhope hotel, he shields his fiancée from seeing her parents pass through the lobby and go up the elevator together to a room where Jake faints from Flomax. Jane later turns down an invitation for a date from Adam, the really nice grownup, to wait in high heels and perfume at home with candles for Jake to arrive, but Agness, who's ovulating, detains him.

Stood up, she gets stoned with Adam before attending Lauren and Harley's party where Jake has brought Agness. After assuring Adam, who's fearful of being hurt again, that she's no longer seeing anyone else, things get more complicated and uncertain as to whom she'll ultimately choose.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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