Un coeur à prendre

I like a movie with heart. It's nice not to see a movie without adults in costumes, violence and all the other negative aspects of life. It's a feel good movie with likeable characters. It is what it is. It was better than some Oscar nominated farces I've seen in the past. By the end of the movie it evoked a sense of what life among family and friends should be.

This movie is just a fun watch. The cast is the best part, primarily because each of the guys is so ridiculously attractive, yet Witherspoon's character is never over-powered. Each of them also has a great rapport with her and her children that is just adorable to watch. Witherspoon is a believable single mom with normal home problems, and the presence of the three young men adds love and personal support into the mix. And it works. This movie portrays a woman in a way that I can get behind. She doesn't date one of the young guys staying with her because she wants to recapture her youth or make someone jealous or for some other superficial reason. She is drawn to him like she would be any other man. The movie highlights, for me, how often youth and women are underestimated in movies, especially ones like these. Younger guys aren't always stupid boy toys or hot, forbidden affairs, and moms are not all Mrs. Robinson. Watch this movie for a laugh, a blush, and a somewhat fresh take on a single mom finding new love.

Home Again is one of those movies that's easy to like and easy to forget. It's amateurish, the characters are flat and one-dimensional and the story is practically a celebration in vapidity and contrivance. Despite this, there's not a mean bone in Home Again's body. There's lightness to it. It's boring but charming in much the same way the interior of a Pier 1 is.

Reese Witherspoon stars as Alice Kinney, a recently separated mother of two who has returned to her childhood home in California to start over. Her mother (Bergen) and deceased father were once considered Hollywood royalty; a fact that three young potential filmmakers (Wolff, Alexander, Rudnitsky) go positively gaga for when they meet her at a bar celebrating her 40th birthday. Blah, blah, blah the three end up moving into the guest house. The estranged husband (Sheen) shows up later making four and Reese Witherspoon tries to cobble together a life amid the chaos.

Did I say chaos, I meant unrealistically utopian equilibrium. Alice and her brother-husbands seem to have little scruples about living in a house together. This is in large part because they don't display any of the negative attributes of a regular human being. Stubbornness becomes selflessness and possessiveness is painted like enamored school boy crushes. Most of the external conflicts exist despite the setup and all the internal conflicts have the undemanding clarity of a children's storybook. To top it all off we're given the comparable setting of a 30's screwball comedy, vis a vis an expansive Hollywood villa, ensuring that the prime demographic will finally have a respite from the grave, emotionally challenging story arcs of The Gilmore Girls (2000-2007).

The movie takes its reverse Three's Company (1976-1984) setup exactly where you think it's going to go. At one point one of Alice's friend's muses that she has 24-hour childcare, tech support and sex all under one roof. Because the children are around, the dynamic stays as pallid and PG as it can, with focus being constantly siphoned off into unnecessary subplots. These subplots provide the few moments of character development for the three boys, but once they're living and interacting in Alice's quaint Spanish style abode, it becomes clear that the main reason for them being in this movie is to be a plot device.

This is where, if you read way too much into it like I did, you get to the good stuff. If viewed through a specific lens, Home Again could be seen as an examination of modern gender relations. At 40, Alice struggles with never truly finding the complete package – a handsome man who can exhibit maturity, meet obligations, provide economic stability, and healthy emotional growth for her and her children while seeing Alice as an equal. This point is further highlighted by the fact that she idolizes her father despite him not exactly being a prize either. So instead of compromising she compartmentalizes. She fits the guys in this film into boxes of positive traits and for the most part, they fit them, at least until the plot deems this equilibrium is no longer stable.

Obviously this line of thought coaxes a lot of interesting questions about masculinity, femininity and modern relationships. But using this movie as a starting point for such a discussion is like reading Tarot through McDonalds Monopoly tokens. This movie isn't Antonia's Line (1995) it's Sweet Home Alabama (2002); which is to say a fluffy and forgettable piece of popular entertainment.

That said Home Again is not all that unpleasant to sit through, in large part because Witherspoon knows exactly how to move sugary confections like this. She proves effortlessly charming and despite some bad editing and awkward staging, Home Again glides on the power of her gossamer wings to give us a moderately entertaining distraction. See it if you must.

Looks like the perfect feel-good movie for mommy. There is everything mommy can possibly want. In the end, almost everybody is happy! Good enough for me too.

This flimsy female fantasy only got made because the "writer/director" has Hollywood connections.

This fluff wouldn't past muster on a TV sitcom, yet here's a 97-minute yawner of a feature film that wastes time and talent and money that could have gone to something worthy.

Reese Witherspoon stars as a 40-year-old rich woman struggling to raise two daughters all on her own in her swanky LA house that used to belong to her daddy who was a famous filmmaker. She's separated from her record-producer husband, but her movie-star mother lives nearby.

Out on a bender with friends she gets drunk with three young would-be filmmakers who end up living in her guest house. How cute! The three guys of course bond with the kids and help Reese with her difficult life. She's a designer trying to get a start in LA but can't even get her web site up and running.

One of the guys gets "serious about her but then the soon-to-be ex-husband shows up. What to do! Since this was written by a woman, we already know the fairy tale ending.

In this supposedly "empowering" story, we're supposed to root for the poor 40-year-old as she makes some "tough" decisions about her privileged life while sitting in her outdoor kitchen by the pool.

Hardly a minute goes by (it seems) when Witherspoon or the two daughters are not being encouraged and bolstered by someone on their looks. All the women do is seek the approval of men. Even the "strssed out" pre-teen can't put on her school play without one of the guys standing in the wings to encourage her.

Witherspoon finally makes a big decision about her marriage, but it's totally meaningless even within the context of this pile of goo.

Vanity production for Witherspoon and little else. The film is not funny or insightful. Candice Bergen is totally wasted as the movie-star mom who pops in a few times to offer advice. Michael Sheen plays the dopey husband. The "guys" are all unknowns.

This should have been titled THREE MEN AND A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN ACTING LIKE A FOOLISH KID.

$12M was wasted on this trash.