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Michael has already begun his annual novena for Meryl Streep’s long-overdue third Oscar, and upon his urging I watched It’s Complicated. Directed by Nancy Meyers, It’s Complicated is a romantic comedy about a successful entrepreneur (La Streep) who find herself living the ultimate revenge fantasy: her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin), who had abandoned her for a much younger woman ten years earlier, comes back to her, and she gets to be the other woman. Not only that but her very nice architect (Steve Martin) is interested in her. It’s a lot like Meyers’s previous movie Something’s Gotta Give, in which a successful playwright (Diane Keaton) has to choose between a younger man (Keanu Reeves) and one closer to her own age (Jack Nicholson). Both movies involve a beautiful house, so you might say that Meyers specializes in the late middle-age architectural romcom.

It’s Complicated is not that complicated: it’s average, but at least it’s not embarrassing—the heroine does not mug adorably or behave like an adolescent, and there are no convenient plot twists (though it has the obligatory woman-confiding-giddily-to-her-shrieking-girlfriends scene, which is pure television). What lifts this movie above average-ness is the acting. Having the words “Meryl Streep” and “brilliant” in the same sentence seems redundant: here she is entirely credible as a smart, sensible woman who lands in a situation she has dreamed of and greatly enjoys, but insists on keeping her wits about her. She imbues her character with a range of human feeling from giddiness to regret, insecurity to quiet strength, ending in self-knowledge. Meryl Streep can take a line drawing and make her 3D.

Steve Martin is always interesting playing a “normal”, regular person; no matter how normal and regular he looks, you know there is something off-kilter about him. We still think he was robbed of the Best Actor Oscar for All Of Me, in which he played a lawyer possessed by the spirit of Lily Tomlin; in the hysterical courtroom sequence you see Steve Martin playing Steve Martin possessed by Lily Tomlin playing Steve Martin.

Alec Baldwin is having a renaissance thanks to 30 Rock, and I want to know: Why is Alec Baldwin so hot? He’s old, he’s fat—he looks like he ate the Alec Baldwin circa Knots Landing—and he’s scorching. This has been going on for a while—when we saw The Departed, Raymond pronounced Baldwin a sexy tub of lard, and I figured it was because Raymond is a freak, but after seeing 30 Rock and this movie I have to agree. Cookie says it’s because he’s funny and angry, which is a lethal combination. Many reviewers have pointed out how comfortable Baldwin is in his own skin, proudly patting the belly that precedes him into a room; he doesn’t care how he looks, and that’s attractive. My theory is that Alec Baldwin has always had an outsize personality, and when he was thin it came across as a menacing arrogance, but now that he’s chunky it fits. What do you think?