Home Again

The roman­tic com­e­dy has long been derid­ed for its ten­den­cy to focus on the pet­ty prob­lems of well-off, white and beau­ti­ful peo­ple. Hal­lie Meyers-Shyer’s direc­to­r­i­al debut unfor­tu­nate­ly encour­ages this prej­u­dice, which her own moth­er (and pro­duc­er) Nan­cy Mey­ers man­aged to prove wrong with her films. Home Again is a tone-deaf, embar­rass­ing film, mem­o­rable only for some hilar­i­ous­ly mis­judged lines and its all-round incompetence.

Reese With­er­spoon plays Alice, a draft ver­sion of her char­ac­ter from Jean-Marc Vallée’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed mini-series Big Lit­tle Lies. She strug­gles with her divorce and lives with her two daugh­ters in the gor­geous house of her late film­mak­er father in Cal­i­for­nia. Her busi­ness endeav­ours so far include pho­tog­ra­phy and fash­ion design – both have been dis­as­trous. On the ​“crazy” night of her 40^th birth­day, she takes home a twen­tysome­thing aspir­ing direc­tor (Pico Alexan­der, irri­tat­ing dandy). If this sounds like mas­ter­piece mate­r­i­al, it doesn’t deliv­er: drunk, the boy pukes in the bath­room before any­thing hap­pens. Cut to the morn­ing after, and his clothes have mag­i­cal­ly disappeared.

Imme­di­ate­ly, a trio of his film­mak­ing bros, whose awful-look­ing short film could appar­ent­ly get them into Hol­ly­wood, move into Alice’s place, after her moth­er con­vinces her that liv­ing with three hot young film­mak­ers is def­i­nite­ly what she needs. Pre­tend­ing to chal­lenge the age-gap taboo, Mey­ers-Shy­er then focus­es on the bemuse­ment of all involved. Worse still is how she force­ful­ly builds a bar­ri­er between young and old when the romance between Alice and her beau ends after the most triv­ial argu­ment in film his­to­ry. Exas­per­at­ing mishaps fol­low. It all ends in hugs with a half-baked les­son about friend­ship, inde­pen­dence and how not to make a roman­tic comedy.