Something's Gotta Give

If I were a hot doctor (who looked like Keanu Reeves), I would not be interested in a romance with a playwright whose latest project ridiculed her last love interest. I'm just saying.

I would be sitting next to the playwright wondering if this very moment that we were having together was going to be converting into fodder for the masses to snigger at with a musical soundtrack and dancing girls. I'd be concerned. But in Something's Gotta Give, the hot young doctor is blissfully unconcerned by such things. He seems like he's happy to participate in creating the humiliating circumstances that will later be glamorized on Broadway.

Something Has to Give is about an older woman (Diane Keaton) whose daughter brings her older lover (Jack Nicolson) to her cottage by the sea. He has a medical emergency while visiting (our doctor is Keanu Reeves), her daughter leaves, and she has to care for him while he heals. Our older lover is a player who moves from one young woman to another young woman to another. Except, he and the mother get along quite well and end up fooling around before he is well enough to head home.

I start by questioning why women want to get together with a guy who's a player. I think it has something to do with their need for approval and men who are players have had the approval of many women. Our current woman does not want to be another link in the chain. She wants to be the one who reforms him and turns him into a monogamy-loving lover. The fact that our heroine is an older woman competing with a younger woman is the icing on the cake (it is kind of yicky that it is her own daughter, but there are many women in this story). Making an older man get together with an older woman rather than a twenty-something bikini model is the dream, right?

That's right. It's a dream.

When I was watching the film, I kept watching it through the eyes of Anjelica Huston. Not that I know her, but I read an article where she speaks of her relationship with Jack Nicolson. She lived with him for ages and she wanted to have a baby with him. He refused her and refused her and refused her... until it came out that he'd impregnated a much younger woman and was leaving Anjelica high and dry. So, as I watched the screen, I kept wondering what she thought of the film that stood up for her while her ex-lover played out the part of a man who learned he had been a dick... except no man would ever learn that he had been a dick through the mechanism of this film. He'd sue.

Diane's character is a playwright and when Jack's character does her dirty after their brief affair, she writes a play about what a terrible man he is and puts it on Broadway. The play is beyond humiliating for him. When he realizes that he's viewed in this way, he goes to visit all the women he blew off to find out their thoughts and feelings about him, only to discover that they all think he's a loser who is wasting his life.

He gets the message.

In the meantime, our revenging playwright has somehow managed to score a relationship with the hot young doctor. It's supposed to be a commentary about age and life, but I keep looking at him and her together with my head cocked. Yes, she's older. Yes, she's lovable. But the reality is that I read an article where Diane Keaton was quoted saying that she hadn't had a date in 40 years. She even appears naked in this film. No dates in 40 years.

This film has to be the worst violation of reality I have ever seen.

First off, players get their love by getting love from lots of different people. It being a new person is part of the charm for them. They don't settle down with one person if they're used to being adored by a different woman each night. Even when they realize their own mortality through a harrowing medical emergency, I think the average player would just play more rather than try to settle down. People don't change in this way. This is the way women wish men would change and the story is written to reflect that wish. The wish for revenge. The wish for penance. The wish for reformation. The wish for reconciliation (because they do get together in the end).

But those are wishes and daydreams and stuff authors think up while they're trying to write something that will make a little money (or a lot of money). They have nothing to do with the reality that all of us must face.

Jack Nicolson has a long, long list of ex-lovers.

Keanu Reeves' girlfriend is nine years younger than him.

Diane Keaton has not been on a date in 40 years.

The only way I can frame this film that doesn't annoy me is that I wish that Jack did the film because he wanted to apologize to Anjelica. He couldn't get back together with her, but even if he couldn't, if he wanted to apologize to her, that would make it not a dumpster fire where reality is burned alive for the sake of entertainment. That would make it mean something in real life. And that would make it worth something... So that it gave something to someone.

Otherwise... YICK!