Nancy Meyers
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In that vein, the film pays lofty tribute to great comedies past, from The Lady Eve to Mr. Hulot's Holiday and Punch-Drunk Love , but Meyers has clearly failed to learn anything from these great works.
It's made by people so dumb they really think that references to The Lady Eve and His Girl Friday will augment their project for its imaginary "discriminating" audience (let me break this to you gently: no one who respects film is voluntarily viewing The Holiday) while simultaneously mystifying the "broader" audience with a depth of movie knowledge.
He's introduced her to classic movies and heroines such as Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday.
Baby Boom (1987)
Directed by Charles Shyer
influenced What Women Want (2000), The Intern (2015), The Holiday (2006), The Parent Trap (1998)
The subtly raised issues update some of the themes raised by Meyers (who started out as a writer) in her script for 1987 Diane Keaton hit Baby Boom .
A longtime exception to the man's-world rule is filmmaker Nancy Meyers, who wrote and produced such woman-centered films as "Private Benjamin" (1980, with Goldie Hawn) and "Baby Boom" (1987, with Diane Keaton) before affirming her auteur status by becoming a director in 1998 with the remake of "The Parent Trap," starring a pre-delinquency Lindsay Lohan.
The 1987 film "Baby Boom," co-written by Meyers with then-husband Charles Shyer, was explicitly concerned with the notion of "having it all," whether a woman could have a family and a career.
This film bears a resemblance to Baby Boom, a 1987 film co-written by Meyers and her former partner, Charles Shyer.
With a lot of the movies she’s written (Private Benjamin, Baby Boom) or writes and directs, she’s thinking about the cost of having a career.
Few filmmakers can do contemporary comedy -- whatever the era -- like Meyers, whose credits include "Baby Boom" and "Something's Gotta Give."
It's made by people so dumb they really think that references to The Lady Eve and His Girl Friday will augment their project for its imaginary "discriminating" audience (let me break this to you gently: no one who respects film is voluntarily viewing The Holiday) while simultaneously mystifying the "broader" audience with a depth of movie knowledge.
In summary: putting Eli Wallach in your movie as an aging Hollywood legend is cute, but including an actual scene from His Girl Friday is a reminder that we could be watching that movie instead.
He's introduced her to classic movies and heroines such as Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday.
Private Benjamin (1980)
Directed by Howard Zieff
influenced What Women Want (2000), The Holiday (2006), The Intern (2015), The Parent Trap (1998)
Themes
Writer-director Nancy Meyers has had a long and productive Hollywood career making comedies just like this, ranging from “Private Benjamin” to “Sister Act” to “Something’s Gotta Give.”
She started in 1980 with the screenplay for the Goldie Hawn hit, Private Benjamin, and moved into directing in 1998 with The Parent Trap .
A longtime exception to the man's-world rule is filmmaker Nancy Meyers, who wrote and produced such woman-centered films as "Private Benjamin" (1980, with Goldie Hawn) and "Baby Boom" (1987, with Diane Keaton) before affirming her auteur status by becoming a director in 1998 with the remake of "The Parent Trap," starring a pre-delinquency Lindsay Lohan.
With a lot of the movies she’s written (Private Benjamin, Baby Boom) or writes and directs, she’s thinking about the cost of having a career.
As co-writer of "Father of the Bride," "Baby Boom," "Irreconcilable Differences," and "Private Benjamin," and later as writer-director of "The Parent Trap" and "What Women Want" and director of "Something's Gotta Give," Meyers has carved out a niche for herself.
"Private Benjamin," "Baby Boom," "Father of the Bride," "What Women Want," "Something's Gotta Give" -- they're the commercial equivalent of a pseudo-feminist spa day.
For another, Nick Marshall's character is such an anachronistic Rat Pack knockoff, down to the lipstick kiss on his face, his love of Frank Sinatra and his willingness to break into a Gene Kelly-influenced soft shoe at the slightest provocation, that you'll think at times you've wandered into the long-delayed remake of "Ocean's 11."
At one point De Niro gets emotional watching Gene Kelly sing "You Were Meant for Me" to Debbie Reynolds in "Singin' in the Rain," a nod to both the classical Hollywood that Meyers looks to update and more straightforward notions of romance.
The closest these two get to a bed is sitting on one while watching Gene Kelly croon “You Were Meant For Me” to Debbie Reynolds in a Netflix screening of Singin’ in the Rain.
At the end of their talk, as Jules drifts off to sleep, Ben watches misty-eyed as the TV plays that wonderful scene from Singin' in the Rain where Gene Kelly sings " You Were Meant for Me " to a glowing Debbie Reynolds.
He turns to mush watching Singin' in the Rain, and he hits it off with the company's in-house masseuse, Fiona (Rene Russo).
It’s about as high concept as today’s comedies get, and guided by Meyers’ fine-tuned hand, it really works (she wrote Protocol and Baby Boom, and wrote/directed the satisfying update of The Parent Trap ).
Home Again (2017)
Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer
influenced by The Holiday (2006), The Parent Trap (1998), The Intern (2015)
It has the single-mother heartache of Baby Boom (from 1987 and co-written with then-husband Charles Shyer), the age-gap comedy of The Intern (2015), and the Brentwood milieu and Pinterest-worthy kitchen of most of Meyers's films.
To be fair, I confess to having a lovingly curated weak spot for much of Meyers’ oeuvre after she split from hubby Charles Shyer (who fared less well without her input): “ What Women Want ,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” “The Holiday,” “ The Intern ”—primo wish-fulfillment chick flicks one and all, and each eminently re-watchable.
Hallie Meyers-Shyer, daughter of director Nancy Meyers (“It’s Complicated,” “The Intern”), makes her writing/directing debut with HOME AGAIN.
And for those itching for a Nancy Meyers fix (It’s Complicated, The Intern), there’s good news — she produced Home Again, which was written and directed by her daughter Hallie Meyers-Shyer.
“Home Again” is the feature debut of writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the daughter of filmmaker Nancy Meyers (“It’s Complicated,” “The Intern”).
This conceit – of harking back to Hollywood's heyday – recalls Meyers's 2006 hit The Holiday, which cast acclaimed method actor Eli Wallach at 91 in a reverent homage to Hollywood.
(The idea is reminiscent of a subplot in the nearly-forgotten 1995 dramedy “Bye Bye Love” that featured Ed Flanders.)
For better or worse — and often at the same time — Garland doesn’t tell the kind of easily digestible sci-fi stories that can be reduced to a hashtag, and he sure as hell isn’t starting to now; not with a movie that often feels equally inspired by both “The Holiday” and “Antichrist.”
Here, the town Harper visits could be out of Nancy Meyers' The Holiday for all its quaint trappings, but here they are infused with malice.
Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
influenced by Something's Gotta Give (2003)
Visuals
Whole scenes from Rear Window (1954), Jaws (1976), and Something’s Gotta Give (2003) are recreated, but the line of between what’s a homage or just lazy filmmaking becomes fuzzy.
But a silly set piece in which Ben enlists some of the younger goofballs of About The Fit on a housebreaking mission, replete with latter-day “Ocean’s Eleven” references, is actually a tolerable bit of rompage.
For some reason, Meyers stages a wacky Ocean’s Eleven -style heist at one point, and too many of the jokes are sitcom-cutesy rather than being actually funny.
An overlong vignette involving a break-in is hopelessly contrived (though it does allow for some amusing chitchat regarding Ocean's Eleven), while a couple of out-of-left-field bits involving Ben's erection are sophomoric and completely out of place.
Instead Ben makes an about-face and plots a campy, “Ocean’s Eleven”-style plot to break into her mom’s home and delete the email before she returns.
For one thing, the film's underlying plot of a rivalry between two advertising executives, one a hard-working woman, the other a womanizing man who takes unfair advantage of her, is rather close to the outline of that archaic 1961 Doris Day-Rock Hudson vehicle "Lover Come Back."
…with some of the best dual-role VFX work this side of “The Parent Trap.”
…much the same way as Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap or Nicolas Cage in Adaptation, he pulls double duty playing twins…
He launches into a Jack-Blackian set-piece in a DVD store, amusing Iris by humming famous themes—Jaws, Gone with the Wind, Chariots of Fire—and so providing suitable diversion from the still hanging-around Jasper (he’s called to ask her help in editing his manuscript, claiming that he needs “some Iris").
It reminds me of What Women Want from 2000.
The cinematography by Dean Cundey (2006's " The Holiday "), making brilliant use of the steadicam and a lush 2.35:1 widescreen format that doesn't waste one inch of the frame, is intoxicating.
(The movie also features a dumb, self-referential joke, in which Miles, giving Iris a quick movie-music tutorial as the two browse the racks of a DVD store, grabs a copy of "Driving Miss Daisy" and burbles on about its terrific score by "Hans.")
The Intern doesn’t have the sophistication or wit of an About Schmidt , but it shares with that Alexander Payne comedy-drama an unspoken acknowledgement that its senior-citizen character has more years behind him than ahead, a realization that subtly colors everything Ben does in the film.
Surely, it’s a movie like “About Schmidt” about a senior citizen looking for a life after his marriage, but the movie is less about the meaningless of life, and more about how character Ben doesn’t have it so bad.
The anti-About Schmidt, The Intern is the boomer daydream of a 66-year-old filmmaker, which definitely feels out of step with the times but maybe not as much as the movie's gender imbalances (this thing is a sausage-fest) and hopeless whiteness.
Hathaway’s take on the underwritten Jules is refreshingly unshowy, but De Niro seems a little lost; his Ben is muted to the point of evanescence, and a moment where he talks to himself in the mirror—he’s been told that Jules distrusts anyone who doesn’t blink—feels like a bizarro-world echo of his iconic Taxi Driver scene.
It’s been almost 40 years since Robert De Niro played Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver,” and here he is again, in “The Intern,” contemplating his reflection in a mirror.
Speed test: Does the thought of a wandering Robert De Niro looking in the mirror and practicing office greetings in the style of Taxi Driver make you blanch?
As an actor, it is surreal to see De Niro staring into a mirror, aping his iconic “You talking to me?” face-off from almost 40 years ago in “Taxi Driver.”
(The film even has a call-out to the “You talkin’ to me?” scene in Taxi Driver, except instead of taunting the mirror, he’s adorably practicing his facial expressions to impress Jules.
It's astonishing to watch De Niro — who has been great in great movies, like The Godfather: Part II and Taxi Driver, and sometimes just as good or even better in imperfect ones like New York, New York — and realize that he's just as capable as any other actor of slouching through a film like a lump of mold making its way down a tree limb.