Weak script means uneven directoral debut for Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the daughter of Nancy Meyers.
Back in the old days — you know, like, five years or so ago, when films were shown on actual film — movies were broken down and shipped to theaters on multiple smallish, shipping-friendly reels. Upon their arrival, they were then reassembled by a projectionist (remember those?) onto one huge reel the size of a dinner table before being shown to audiences.
The downside of that system, aside from the labor-intensive nature of it all, was that it wasn’t unheard of for an inattentive projectionist to mix up the reels during reassembly and show them out of order. Sometimes, heaven forbid, they would even forget a reel altogether, which meant a movie ended abruptly about 10 or 20 minutes earlier than it should have.
In this digital age, those days are behind us for the most part, but you can be forgiven if you have a sort of projectionist-era flashback upon seeing the sprawling, rambling “Home Again, ” which feels as if it’s about 10 minutes short of at least partially redeeming its earlier missteps with a decent ending.
For most of its running time, writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s romantic comedy — starring Reese Witherspoon as a 40-year-old mother of two young girls who moves back home to Los Angeles following her separation from her music-biz husband (Michael Sheen) — is a sweet-enough shrug of a film. But a movie needs more than sweetness to work. Otherwise we’d have long since gotten a “Candy Crush” movie.
To really work as a satisfying viewing experience, a movie needs a full story arc, a resolution to the conflicts it introduces and, perhaps most importantly, some sort of emotional endpoint for the personal journey of the main character.
By and large, “Home Again” is missing all of those things.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its assets. That starts with high production value, built around glossy, made-for-HGTV sets that don’t quite feel lived-in but which are undeniably beautiful. (“Take your shoes off, ” Witherspoon’s character, Alice, is admonished before entering a house in one scene, in what may or may not be a self-referential dig at movies that feature such impossibly idealized living spaces.)
Even more importantly, it’s got an appealing cast. In addition to featuring Witherspoon, Sheen and a brief appearance by Candice Bergen, it stars Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky and Pico Alexander as three handsome young filmmakers who end up living in the guest house of Alice’s L.A. villa. (The “why” part of that arrangement is a little too convoluted to get into here, but suffice it to say that the whole scenario creates romantic entanglements.) All three young actors inhabit their roles with ease and charm.
And speaking of young actors, if somebody doesn’t soon make a star out of 12-year-old Lola Flanery, who plays one of Witherspoon’s on-screen daughters, then they’re either not really trying or she’s just not interested.
Those assets aside, the big problem with “Home Again” is with the story, which is decidedly messy — but not in a good, “life is messy” kind of way. Similarly, its attempts at humor rarely land squarely.
It was written by first-time director Meyers-Shyer, whose personal experiences clearly worked their way into the story. Like Witherspoon’s character, Meyers-Shyer is the daughter of a beloved Hollywood veteran, in this case director Nancy Meyers, whose impact on the romantic comedy genre is noteworthy enough that her films (“What Women Want, ” “Something’s Gotta Give, ” “It’s Complicated”) are something of a sub-genre to themselves.
Given that real-life genetic connection, and the fact that Nancy Meyers is a producer of “Home Again, ” it’s perhaps inevitable that her daughter’s first film features any number of Meyers trademarks: strong female characters, those stylish sets, unconventional plots that are hard to summarize in a single sentence.
Still, while it wouldn’t be correct to characterize “Home Again” as a formula film, it’s generic enough that it somehow feels formulaic. Consequently, “Home Again” never distinguishes itself as anything but a predictable and thoroughly ordinary film, just with lots of fancy window dressing.
That’s particularly true when it hits the home stretch. That’s when a filmmaker gets a chance to pull together all the threads of her story, to drive home her message, to make it clear to audiences why she set out to tell this particular story in the first place.
In the case of “Home Again, ” it’s also where Meyers-Shyer fumbles the ball, delivering a perfunctory half-ending that feels as if she didn’t quite know how to end her film — if she indeed knew where it was going in the first place. Like the rest of “Home Again, ” that ending is sweet and glossy but less than satisfying, as if its missing something.
And this time, there’s no blaming the projectionist.
Mike Scott covers TV and movies for NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune. Reach him at mscott@nola.com, and follow him on Twitter at @moviegoermike.
Snapshot: Reese Witherspoon stars in a romantic comedy about a 40-year-old woman who, after separating from her husband– and in a fit of spontaneity — agrees to let three aspiring filmmakers (the young, handsome type) move into her guesthouse.
What works: It features a solid cast, and it gets points for its beautiful, made-for-HGTV sets.
What doesn’t: The story itself is rambling and messy, and it lacks a satisfying ending.
: Witherspoon, Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky, Pico Alexander, Lola Flanery, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen, Lake Bell, Eden Grace Redfield.: Hallie Meyers-Shyer.: PG-13, for some thematic and sexual material.
