Heartburn

It is some years since I saw this film, but I definitely thought at the time it was vastly under-rated, and now that I have seen the voter's scores for this, I am surprised all over again. Obviously, I have to log off and go to the video store to refresh my memory, but: the story was great, the song Joni Mitchell contributed was one of her all-time bests, and how could Meryl Streep ever be in anything that wasn't worthwhile? By the way, the book was better, punctuated with recipes. It is an autobiographical tale, which bursts the balloon of the Watergate heroes and is definitely one of the most entertaining and realistic of the cinematic versions of life and love.

Heartburn could have been, should have been, so much better. It had all the ingredients for greatness, with Mike Nichols, Nora Ephron, Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, a great supporting cast, Nestor Almendros as cinematographer and good music built around some fine Carly Simon songs. And, it's a juicy true-life story based on Nora Ephron's marriage to Carl Bernstein. But Ephron's screenplay lets us down. The film is usually billed as a romantic comedy, and there are some gently poignant, quasi-comic moments. But it is mostly a drama, a sour take on an unhappy marriage. And parts are dull and slow. It was a genuine pleasure to see some great acting from Nicholson and Streep, but that wasn't enough to make their characters interesting nor to save the film.

Although somewhat artificial, the humor and "heartburn" of this Nora Ephron film seem more affecting and less manufactured than those in her more slick subsequent films, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in Seattle. Perhaps the autobiographical slant helped.

Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson play a couple based on Ephron and Carl Bernstein. They meet, marry, settle in Washington, and have children. Streep's wedding-day jitters, it turns out, were amply justified; she discovers an affair between her husband and a social-climbing hostess.

Streep is so luminous and so natural that one may not realize until the end of the film how completely insipid and devoid of any distinguishing qualities her character is. "Rachel" changes from a wan, nervous divorcee (before meeting Nicholson's character) to an obsessively devoted wife and mother who keeps babbling about how happy she is.

Nicholson is well-cast as the rakish but (initially) endearing husband. The supporting cast reflects the expert hand of Juliet Taylor, Woody Allen's longtime casting director, who peppered it with many familiar faces, including Allen favorites Joanna Gleason, Caroline Aaron, and Karen Akers. Maureen Stapleton is particularly droll as Streep's shrink. Nineties audiences will enjoy seeing Kevin Spacey as a neurasthenic mugger.

The comedy in the film is somewhat uneven, but often extremely engaging, as in a running parody of "Masterpiece Theatre." And compare the spontaneous bravado of Nicholson's lopsided rendition of "Soliloquy" from Carousel (the comic highlight) to the forced quirkiness of Meg Ryan's tone-deaf "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" in When Harry Met Sally...

You got (the now late) Mike Nichols, you got Streep, you got Nicholson, you got Nora Ephron adapting her own semi-menoir about her relationship with Carl Bernstein. Given the pedigree behind everything involved with the film - and, for me, I'm a sucker for a good infidelity drama - it's only a shame this isn't, you know, one of the top films of the 80's. It doesn't quite get there, but it's not for lack of trying on anyone's part. Heartburn is an entertaining picture, even as it doesn't quite move to a beat of a fast drummer, nor does it have very easy solutions to its dramatic conflicts. But that's a good thing here; Nichols and Ephron know this story has people who can't resolve or move on too easily, despite all signs pointing in a direction the audience can read.

It's basically this: girl and boy meet, boy marries girl - though girl doesn't really want to marry exactly, and one of the funnier set pieces shows Rachel stewing about in the bedroom adjacent to the wedding as friends and family come to try and support (sort of) this whole union - girl and boy find a real 'fixer-upper' house, girl is going to have boy's baby, things are happy... and then suspicion creeps in for the girl. A lot of this is not very much 'plot' driven, though Nichols knows how to tell his story.

If there's anything 'off' it might be that the pacing is a little lackadaisical. Not quite the same as 'slow' exactly; you just have to be keyed in to the rhythm that's going on here. The filmmakers here are emphasizing character more. You get scenes, sometimes very funny, like when Mark just breaks out into a goofy song following the news that he's having a baby... and then breaks out into song again the next morning to wake up Rachel. A lot of the movie is more funny in a sly, observational way. It's not as 'LOL' type of funny as work Ephron was to do after this, and some might say like those other movies it's a little "chick" centric. I can't say if it can be so easily pegged, albeit there are piffy bits like Rachel watching the TV and getting messages about the infidelities going on.

Nichols knows this material needs the help of its actors, and of course he has two of the best... ever, really. The charisma and combination just works, there's no doubt about that. And there's both real comedy and real drama to work on (probably more drama than comedy). And sometimes things happen in the movie that seem to be more incidental than anything to push it forward - i.e. Kevin Spacey's debut as a thief - but even this ends up kind of playing a part in the story, at a key moment, near the end. The actors make all these beats very, painfully, awkwardly, sadly and bittersweet-like real. When Rachel suddenly realizes that moment where things are "wrong" in a hair salon, the way it comes to her, how Nichols moves the camera (and, one of his gifts, knowing when NOT to cut), and how she looks and she goes from 0 to 60... it's wonderful stuff.

Why not great? Maybe a little too loose in parts, and the Carly Simon score is grating after a while and dates the movie (the songs too). But all in all, Heartburn is a very good movie about this relationship and its peaks and valleys, but also about the nature of indecision, and how something as seemingly clear-cut as 'stay with your husband - or go' is a real, concrete, existential dilemma. Underrated, really.

Like a good relationship that goes sour, "Heartburn" is impossible to love but hard to write off entirely. Despite its fine cast and script by Nora Ephron, the film is disjointed and, ultimately, dishonest.

Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson play two Washington journalists who meet at a wedding, and — seemingly in the next scene — are saying their own vows. The developments that follow in their relationship are just as abrupt and just as believable. The rapid-fire pace of their many separations and reconciliations stretches credibility to the limit, and it's hard to generate any interest in these characters when it was never clear what drew them together in the first place.

Streep does a fine job as magazine writer Rachel, but Nicholson's cad is all too familiar in his role of Mark, the womanizing columnist. Supporting players Stockard Channing, Maureen Stapleton, Jeff Daniels and Kevin Spacey, while uniformly excellent, seem underutilized and distract from the main plot.

"Heartburn" is worth watching, if only for its strong cast, but it's as memorable as leftover lasagna.