Review: Home Again

Home Again marks the first feature film by writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the daughter of two leading figures of the romantic comedy genre: directors Charles Shyer (Baby Boom, Father of the Bride) and Nancy Meyers (What Women Want, Something's Gotta Give). It's also a return to the genre for Reese Witherspoon, whose successes with Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama made her America's Sweetheart in the early naughts. With all that behind it, Home Again should be a more than solid rom-com; instead it's an anaemic but comforting effort.

Witherspoon plays Alice Kinney, a newly separated single mother of two girls trying to get her life in order. About to hit the big 4-0, she and her daughters have moved into her father's envy-inducing Los Angeles bungalow so that she can get her interior design business off the ground. Whilst celebrating her birthday with a couple of girlfriends, Alice is chatted up by charming 27-year-old aspiring director Harry (Pico Alexander), whom she ends up taking back to her place but whose drunkenness ends up with him passed out on her bed. Meanwhile, his actor brother Teddy (Nat Wolff) and their screenwriter friend George (Jon Rudnitsky) are sleeping off their hangovers on her couch.

Flattered by their attention and learning that the trio have been kicked out of their apartment, Alice's actress mother (a scene-stealing Candice Bergen, who is woefully underused) convinces her to let them stay in the guest house. The guys are delighted, especially George who is amazed to realise that Alice is the daughter of famous filmmaker and philanderer John Kinney. Alice's life is soon complicated by keeping her affair with Harry hidden from her daughters, dealing with a ridiculously demanding client (Lake Bell), and the reappearance of musician husband Austen (Michael Sheen), who wants to win her back. We should all have her problems - as one character notes, Alice has free tech support via Teddy, a babysitter in George, and a sex buddy in the form of Harry.

Romantic comedies thrive on the misunderstandings, obstacles and self-sabotage that congest the path to happily ever after. Home Again piles on multiple impediments, but they're so easily overcome that they may as well not be barriers at all. Any apprehensions Alice may have about having her boy toy live under the same roof immediately dissipate. The girls bond instantly with all the boys and even the conflict Austen brings to the table barely registers. Witherspoon's characteristically serrated sunniness has been smoothed over, leaving her with hardly anything to work with. It also may have been a mistake to have Alexander as her romantic interest when pairing her with the far more compelling Rudnitsky might have been better.

Despite it being the cinematic equivalent of soft serve ice cream, Home Again is not without its charms. Everything is brightly lit and inviting, the actors appealing, and Meyers-Shyer certainly has inherited her mother's predilection for privileged SoCal lifestyle porn if not her nimbleness with well-worn tropes.

Home Again

Directed by: Hallie Meyers-Shyer

Written by: Hallie Meyers-Shyer

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky, Pico Alexander, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen, Lake Bell, Reid Scott