'It's Complicated': The Answer to Movies about Women

Being thousands of miles away from my grandmother's ham and too much of a hypochondriac to risk death by annoyance on an airplane, I decided to be "Jewish" this Christmas -- and opt for Chinese food and a cheesy chick flick. As Melinda Henneberger so subtly noted here, "It's Complicated," Nancy Meyers' grown-up version of good girl gone battle-axe, seemed to fit the stereotype.

Actually what I love about Meyers' films, most notably "Something's Gotta Give" and "Private Benjamin" (sue me), is that they don't (at least didn't) conform to any of the stereotypes Hollywood would have us believe about women of a certain age or class. Diane Keaton's nude scene in "Something's" was revolutionary--soft lighting be damned. (But Alec Baldwin's butt crack in "It's Complicated"? Ahhh, not so much.)

The New York Times Magazine ran a smart profile on Meyers last Sunday, calling her impressive list of titles (including "Baby Boom," "Father of the Bride" and "The Parent Trap") movies in which "happily ever after doesn't always mean riding off with some man on a white horse; it could just as easily mean roaring off on a motorcycle all by yourself, wearing a wedding dress that was now beside the point." No wonder I like this chick.

But with "Complicated" -- the story of a divorced couple who decide to give it another shot, and miss -- Meyers' female star (played by Meryl Streep, respectfully known in my mind as La Streep) is less revolutionary than run-of-the-mill. A decade after her divorce, Jane has finally figured out her "normal" -- owning a booming business, a huge home and feeling a bit lonely. Enter her ex, sex, and an architect.

Despite valiant efforts from Alec Baldwin as Jane's beer-bellied ex-husband and John Krasinki as her soon-to-be son-in-law (both men reprising their small screen roles on "30 Rock" and "The Office" respectively), "Complicated" fails to do much more than tell a classic "girl meets jerk, girl dumps jerk, girl meets jerk, etc. etc. etc." story.

But maybe that's okay. Maybe it's even a good thing, a great thing. If there can be 50,000 different blockbusters in one year about a guy blowing up a car, a spaceship, the moon or whatever then why can't there be a ton of movies about middle-aged women getting their freak on in a fabulous kitchen? Does everything about women have to break new ground?

While reading the Times' story, "Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women?," I couldn't help but replace "middle-aged divorced white women" with "young single successful black women." The tired line on both groups is that they're over-educated and bored, nuance be damned. Fortunately, Meyers has "sledgehammered" a gaping "hole into the wall of an audience" that rarely sees itself on screen, painted perhaps too softly but with anything but a heavy hand. That's the same thing I plan to do with the screen adaption of my forthcoming book, "Bitch is the New Black", a satirical (and true) rumination on dating while black. And as I contemplate the weight of the story I plan to tell -- to an audience that deserves a lot and expects even more -- the answer to the question of whether anybody can make a movie for women is this: It's complicated.