Home Again (2017) - Good-looking, LA-set, girly-cute romcom

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Shades of red surround good-looking, popular star Reese Witherspoon on this poster for Hallie Meyers-Shyer's Home Again

 

A recently separated mother of two leaves her affluent home situation on a bender for her birthday and then decides to open her home to three attractive young male filmmakers, who are in need of housing...

Home Again is written and directed by debuting Hallie Meyers-Shyer (The Parent Trap (1998, actress)).

It is a first effort that's a matter of taste; Home Again is enormously girly, enormously cute, and you really better also be a Reese Witherspoon (Sing (2016)) fan to appreciate it, - but if you are then it is also quite rewarding.

The world of film and Hollywood are presented as an environment in a partially loving and partially an exposing way, (Meyers-Shyers has plenty of inside knowledge as the daughter of the great romcom filmmaker Nancy Meyers.) Lake Bell (Drunk History (2019, TV-series)) is good as the 'Hollywood nightmare woman', and Pico Alexander (Hot Air (2018)), Nat Wolff (Stella's Last Weekend (2018)) and Jon Rudnitsky (Set It Up (2018)) work well as the three young men, - despite their characters being something of a woman's dream multiplied by three, because no three guy friends in Hollywood chasing a break are really this good., I am willing to bet.

The fantasy is appealing nonetheless, Lola Flanery (The Mist (2017, TV-series)) is good as the elder daughter, and Michael Sheen (Doolittle (2020)) is ideal as the separated husband, who shows up some time into the story, and (of course) Witherspoon is good and lovely in the middle, rich and naturally never with a word verbalizing the source of her (genre-typical)  wealth. Meyers-Shyer really traces her mother's foot steps here.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 15 mil. $

Box office: 37.2 mil. $

= Minor flop (returned 2.48 times its cost)

[Home Again was released 7 September (Israel, Ukraine) and runs 97 minutes. Shooting took place from October - December 2016 in Los Angeles, California. The film opened #2, behind It, to an 8.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#4), grossing 27 mil. $ (72.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Mexico with 1.6 mil. $ (4.3 %) and the UK with 1.2 mil. $ (3.2 %). Meyers-Shyer is set to return as writer/director with Goodrich, which is in pre-production. Witherspoon returned in The Mindy Project (2017, TV-series) and theatrically in A Wrinkle in Time (2018). Home Again is rotten at 33 % with a 4.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Home Again?

Admission (2013) - Despite messy script, Fey is hilarious in Weitz's romcom

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The film's two stars are the whole show on this simple poster for Paul Weitz's Admission

Portia Nathan is a Princeton admissions officer, who is competing for a raise while also interacting with the critical leader of a small school, who has a special student who is eying the prestigious university for his further studies.

Tina Fey (Martin & Orloff (2002)) is really funny here, and a fan of hers will enjoy most of Admission simply for her performance and several divine line deliveries in it. Lily Tomlin (The Pink Panther 2 (2009)) is also funny as Fey's feminist mother, as is Oleg Krupa (Blood Ties (2013)) as her Russian romantic interest. Paul Rudd (Wanderlust (2012)) is good as the critical school leader, although he isn't heading the fun factor in Admission.
The film has a problematic script: SPOILER A leading plot thread concerns Fey's realizing that Rudd's prodigy student (cute Nat Wolff (Stuck in Love (2012)) struggles with the part) must be her biological son, and it doesn't really work. Rudd is a single father to an adopted son from Africa himself here, and that almost completely unproblematic aspect also seems like something of an assertion. - Is the story mainly about Fey's finally taking a stance against her difficult mother, her situation with her strange job, about her discovering she may have a son, or is it about the educational system in general, her romance with Rudd, - or Rudd's sweet adopted son? (He is played by Travaris Spears (Freedom (2014)).
Karen Croner (One True Thing (1998)) has written the messy script, adapting the same-titled 2009 novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz (The White Rose (2006)), and great New-Yorker filmmaker Paul Weitz (Grandma (2015)) directed it. Admission gets by mainly due to Fey's hilarious main performance.

Related post: 

Paul Weitz: American Pie (1999) or, Losing It Before Prom

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 13 mil. $
Box office: 18.6 mil. $
= Big flop
[Admission premiered 22 March (North America and the Philippines) and runs 108 minutes. Filming took place in New Jersey, including at Princeton University, and in New York, from May 2012 - ?. The film opened #5, behind fellow new releases The Croods and Olympus Has Fallen and holdover hits Oz the Great and Powerful and The Call to a 6.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its second week and grossed 18 mil. $ (96.8 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 343k $ (1.8 %) and the UK with 104k $ (0.6 %). The film's terrible international performances killed its chance of becoming theatrically successful. Weitz returned with Grandma, again with Tomlin. Admission is rotten at 38 % with a 5.5/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Admission?