Heartburn

"Heartburn" is a movie based on the book and subsequent screenplay by Nora Ephron. While names were changed in order to avoid lawsuits, the story is about her marriage to famed Washington Post writer Carl Bernstein...and how he eventually destroyed the marriage through his infidelity. Clearly this is a great example of a wronged wife getting her revenge.

The story begins when Mark and Rachel (Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep) meeting. Soon they both marry and things seem swell. They have a child and another's on the way when she discovers he's cheating on her. Not surprisingly, the marriage cannot withstand this and the film is about this process of discovery, divorce and, eventually, life going on from there.

The film's star is Streep....and she's in the lion's share of the movie. Nicholson is definitely a secondary character in the story. Together, you have two very fine actors...with capable support from quite a few familiar character actors, such as Steven Hill, Stockard Channing, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O'Hara and quite a few others. It's a very high quality production with lovely acting and is well written. My only complaint, and it's not the film's fault, but the story is depressing and hard to watch. It's definitely a movie to watch with some Kleenex nearby. Well worth seeing if a bit unpleasant. And, perhaps all the more unpleasant because it's mostly true.

By the way, the theme song to this film received TONS of airtime back in the 80s. I remember how overplayed it was on the radio. Sadly, it's also way overplayed in the film...with clips of it being used and re-used and re-used repeatedly. It got to the point where I felt like screaming because it was played way too much.

Just to watch Streep and Nicholson together in a movie is good enough for me. A lot of the scenes seemed kinda improvised. They're crazy good together. I always wondered why they weren't in more movies together. Who knows, maybe they didn't like each other very much in real life. Also, Nicholson always seems to be dancing between genius and insanity. Streep's more the straight-forward type. At least to me.

Nora Ephron who wrote this and the supposed autobiographical novel it's based on, wasn't known for immense depth, but for romance. I think every girl or woman who grew up before the start of this century is familiar with her work (Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally etc.).

6.6/10 just for the main leads.

Am I blind, or did I just see that this film has an overall rating of 6.0/10 on IMDb and a 47% approval rating on RottenTomatoes?

Acting:

Alright, so let me start this review by stating that I'm a die-hard fan of Jack Nicholson. So, I might be slightly transparent about the flaws of the movie, but there aren't many. This film is very hard to get a hold of actually. I stumbled upon a used DVD store and being a collector of Jack Nicholson's films and a huge fan, I immediately purchased it. I hadn't ever heard of this film until then and made a quick research on IMDb and Wikipedia about the movie. This movie's story is written by Nora Ephron and is loosely based on her life and relationship with real-life journalist Carl Bernstein. On paper, the story of the movie goes like this: Divorced woman meets a sort-of heartless playboy, falls for him, marries him, has children with him, and leaves him after figuring out that he's been cheating on her. Sounds so simple, but in reality, it isn't. That's the reason why we have veteran actors like Nicholson and Meryl Streep on board. Meryl Streep is brilliant. Totally. Even in totally clichéd scenes, she performs to her fullest. Many people might be surprised, but this is actually the first film of Meryl Streep I've seen. I had always wanted to see her work ever since learning that she has the most number of Academy Award nominations for Best Actress or Supporting Actress, but never really got around to doing so. I wonder what her really brilliant performances would be like, if this was off the hook itself. Jack Nicholson plays the uber cool guy he always is and as we always have more often than not, there is a scene of him going totally crazy. But I don't want to give away too many things. You should check out the movie for yourself. This movie also marks the feature-film debut of Kevin Spacey, whom I was quite surprised to see actually, but it turned out that it was only a small cameo.

Story, Screenplay and Direction:

Enough about actors. Lets get down to the story, screenplay and ultimately, the execution of the overall film. This film is ultra-realistic. Except a couple of teeny-tiny moments in the film, you'll be surprised at how super realistic that this film is. Being born in the 90s, I was able to get a slight sense of how life revolved in the 80s and was super-thrilled and totally upset in not being able to experience the US of that era. That is also where the film goes awry, in a sense. It is so realistic, that it loses itself onto you at a point where you wouldn't know what is going on. There are hints of Mark (Jack Nicholson) being a brilliant and a sincere reporter, but we really don't get to see much of that. However, we do get to see a couple of scenes of Rachel (Meryl Streep) working in her NY paper where she's a food journalist, but it doesn't go beyond that. Basically, the emphasis is so much on the character's emotions, especially Streep's, that the film kind of weighs down a bit when you reach the 58 minute mark. Other than this slight niggle, this film is amazing. Streep showcases her character's emotions so perfectly that you actually start to feel for her and get a tight sense of what her character is going through. Jack Nicholson shines in whatever scene he's in, as always, but is ultimately weighed down by a superb display by Meryl Streep. I was surprised that she hadn't gotten an Oscar Nomination for this, but hey, Nicholson didn't either, for 'The Shining (1980)', which was one of his best works in the 80s.

Technical Work:

The cinematography is top-notch too, considering the fact that this was the 80s. I had initially thought that this was a Stanley Kubrick film, which always has the best camera work. But it was good to know that Mike Nichols also had an affinity towards great camera work and composition to each and every scene. Lastly, I had learned that this film had become even more popular because of the superb musical score by Carly Simon. 'Coming Around Again' is too good. Whoever you are, whatever era you were born into, you would surely have heard this song, even if you might not be able to recognize it just by reading the name.

Overall, this is a brilliant film, with a very few cons. You should definitely watch it, if only for Meryl Streep's performance.

This is a very, very highly underrated film.

This film is based on Nora Ephron's "novel". we're told, but the novel was a largely biographical depiction of her failed marriage to Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post journalist famous for his exposure of the Watergate scandal which brought down President Nixon,,a marriage which ended in divorce as a result of his long affair with a fellow journalist. The Carl Bernstein character, Mark Forman, is played by Jack Nicholson with his usual devilish, eyebrow-twitching, grinning charm but the film is carried by Meryl Streep as his long-suffering wife, whose character, writer Rachel Samstadt, seems to age without recourse to added lines or makeup or any of the usual Hollywood trickery but purely by a change of body-language and a certain implied physical heaviness. The film is well-served by its supporting players as well as its principals, notably Stockard Channing and Jeff Daniels. It's both moving and very funny and the fact that their first child, Annie, is played by Streep's real-life daughter makes the mother/child interaction natural and utterly charming.

The acting is superb by the whole cast and what could've become an over-dramatic film has wonderful moments of humor that works so well. Although the story is quite sad in parts the film is balanced out by a lot of humor. I found myself laughing out loud at this film a lot. Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson are brilliant, and Carly Simon wrote the soundtrack which is also great. It is still well worth watching.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

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.