Home Again: Film Review

Home Again: Film Review

Based on no real kind of reality, other than the fluffiness that exists in the white privilege confines of the movies, Reese Witherspoon's latest unashamedly and unapologetically panders to the female audience.

Witherspoon plays Alice Kinney, the just-turned-40-year-old daughter and single mother-of-two of film-maker John Kinney, who's recently divorced.
Celebrating a night out with friends for her birthday, the eternally perky Alice meets Harry, Teddy and George, a trio of wannabe film-makers who've just been evicted but are on the verge of a big deal.

Nearly hooking up with one and finding the other two in her house the next day, Alice finds her mother (Candice Bergen, making the very most of her very few scenes) has invited them to move in while they search for the big break.
But problems arise in this odd family when Alice's former husband Austen(the begrizzled Michael Sheen) decides he wants her back.

Home Again exists in the kind of bubble that Hollywood rom-coms tend to perpetuate.

With everyone looking incredibly perfect and somehow incredibly bland, Nancy Meyers' daughter Hallie Meyers-Shyer's assembled a veritable piece of fluff that trades largely on Witherspoon's eternal likeability and girl-next-door-could-be-your-best-friend sheen to maximum effect.

With little attachment to any reality and some perfectly pristine house interiors, Home Again is a sort of wishful piece of life porn, where the very troubles that arise aren't actually really troubles and everything ends nicely at the end of the day for everyone.
It's so detached from real life and drowned in a sort of saccharine appeal that it's likely to give you diabetes.

That said, its target audience will lap up the tenuously underdeveloped love triangle, will laugh riotously at the bristling of the generations when Austen returns and swoon as the nice guy gets the girl by launching a charm offensive that culminates in him fixing a wonky kitchen cupboard and entering Alice's heart and affections.

It's not that Home Again is anything other than what it aspires to be, and while there are a few moments which will garner some amusement, there's a nagging feeling that any male will find this dangerously intolerable at times and any female will wilt in its presence and perpetuation of the Witherspoon appeal.

Broad and yet bland, Home Again manages to be just about inoffensive over its 90 minute run time - however, its lack of developing plots and desire to indulge only the slightest of plot developments inside its bubble mean Meyers-Shyer's debut is about as appealing as flat champagne - there are moments of sparkle, but the after taste is anything but pleasant.