It's Complicated
2009 · 121 min
Directed by Nancy Meyers. Written by Nancy Meyers. Starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski.
Ten years after their divorce, Jane and Jake Adler unite for their son's college graduation and unexpectedly end up sleeping together. But Jake is married, and Jane is embarking on a new romance with her architect. Now, she has to sort out her life—just when she thought she had it all figured out.
Critics 59% · audiences 60% · streaming on YouTube (free) · $113 million in the US and Canada on its first run · $106 million elsewhere · about 15 million tickets sold, 4.9% of the country
What they said about It's Complicated
- 2009
the most emotionally sophisticated of all Meyers's fantasies
— Wesley Morris, Boston Globe - 2009
you don't have to feel guilty for lapping up this froth. Just don't expect nourishment.
— Peter Travers, Rolling Stone - 2009
cottage industry of movies about romantically-inclined middle-aged people.
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times - 2009
middle-aged porn, the specialty of Meyers, who also set ladies and interior decorators drooling over homes and gardens in 2006's The Holiday.
— Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
How it got made
In May 2008, Nancy Meyers agreed to a project for Universal Studios that she would write and direct, to be co-produced with Scott Rudin. The project was referred to as The Untitled Nancy Meyers Project during its inception and early production. Establishing commitments from the principals began in 2008, with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin entering discussions in August, and Steve Martin joining the cast in October. Casting continued through 2009, with Zoe Kazan, Lake Bell, and Hunter Parrish joining in January, John Krasinski in February, Rita Wilson in March, and Caitlin Fitzgerald in June.
While the majority of the film is set in Santa Barbara, California, most of the filming – including nearly all of the interiors – took place in New York City. Principal photography began on February 18, 2009, at the Broadway Stages in the Brooklyn borough, where the interior scenes of Jane's house were shot. Several other key locations were used during the first portion of filming in New York, including Picnic House, a large, studio-sized structure in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, where Jane's bakery was built inside; the facilities at Sarabeth's Bakery in the Chelsea Market; and a commercial loft building in New York's Chelsea district, where scenes at Adam's office were filmed in. As Martin was soon to embark on a concert tour to promote The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo (2009), his schedule required the team to complete shooting his scenes during the first two months of filming.
In April 2009, the company relocated to Los Angeles, where cast and crew started filming scenes taking place outside Jane's house, for which a ranch house located in Thousand Oaks in the north of Los Angeles was used. In mid-April, the crew spent a few days filming exteriors in Montecito and Santa Barbara – just days before wildfires took a heavy toll on the area. Additional scenes were taken in front of numerous downtown landmarks, including the Santa Barbara County Courthouse and the El Paseo section. Afterwards, the team returned to Los Angeles for completion of the scenes at Jane's house and for the filming at the Bel-Air Bay Club in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. In early May, principal photography returned to Brooklyn for completion. For Luke's graduation scenes, shooting took place at St. John's University in Queens and on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Several different locations stood in for the fictional Park Regent hotel: While a residence building on Park Avenue and 59th Street was used for exterior shots, the lobby and Jane's hotel room were in the JW Marriott Essex House. The hotel bar was the interior of a restaurant on Tenth Avenue. Filming eventually completed in August 2009.
At the box office
Released on December 25, 2009, in the United States, It's Complicated opened in 2,887 locations and placed fourth on the US box office after its first weekend. It charted behind Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel with $22.1 million, scoring a $7,655 average income per theatre. It played well through the holidays and into January 2010, ultimately closing on April 1 with $112.7 million in North America and a total of $219.1 million worldwide.