It’s pretty easy to work out what the filmmakers’ mission statement would have been for the new film ‘Something’s Gotta Give’. Make a damn good romantic comedy! I guess it helps when you’ve got two of the finest actors in the business, Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, to play the leading roles.
The scenario…how does one get two middle-aged people, who have skirted romance, find it.?
Diane Keaton plays Erica a middle aged and middle class, responsible and respectable playwright. She is busy with her career, her friends, and her grown up daughter. She doesn’t even turn her mind to romance.
Jack Nicholson plays Harry, a middle aged and well to do playboy. His life is governed by a paramount principle that he doesn’t date women who are over thirty years old. That is, he doesn’t want to get involved.
They meet when Diane’s daughter brings Jack home for a dirty weekend wrongly expecting mum not to be home. Jack stays past the weekend and when the daughter has to go away for a short time a chemistry develops between them.
Writer/director Nancy Meyers comes up with a big box of tricks before
Jack and Diane get together and live happily ever after.
She has Diane dreamily walk around naked in her bedroom when Jack embarrassingly walks in on her.
In a clever set-up to their romance she has Diane give Jack mouth to mouth after he collapses with a cardiac arrest in her daughters bedroom when they were about to get up to some hanky panky.
The inevitable time comes when the pressure becomes too much for Jack and he exits ‘stage left’. A crunch scene happens when Diane happens to be at the same restaurant as Jack and sees him dining with a young babe and storms off crying.
In Nancy’s bag of tricks there’s a brilliant set up and pay off. Early on Jack teases Diane about her turtleneck tops, inferring that they reveal her as an inhibited, repressed character.
Jack and Diane end up in the cot. Diane hasn’t had it for a while, and she gets all hot and bothered. In a well played out erotic scene, Diane asks Jack to get a pair of scissors and he cuts into Diane’s top right through the middle.
‘Something’s Gotta Give’ is not the kind of film that operates on any deep level. It is a well crafted tale of romance. The closest it gets to some deeper message is when Jack, after decades of weaving around any chance of his heart getting involved, has to go through some dramatic changes. Whenever things aren’t going too well with Diane he develops heart pains and gets rushed to hospital. In the end he gets the message from the hospital medic that nothing is actually wrong with his heart, it’s just his heart feeling things again!
And the verdict on ‘Something’s Gotta Give’… The filmmakers worked towards and achieved their mission statement. The film wasn’t great, memorable cinema, however it was good, old fashioned entertainment.