HOME AGAIN: COMEDY IN THE COMFORT ZONE

Critics are gunning for first-time writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer. They’ve often attacked her mother, Nancy Meyers, for making highly-polished romantic comedies with good-looking actors who live in even better-looking houses (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, et al). Meyers-Shyer has stayed in that comfort zone with her mother as producer, but she has a not-so-secret weapon in her arsenal: leading lady Reese Witherspoon, who is immensely likable in Home Again. In the film, Witherspoon’s late father was a famous moviemaker—a not-so-inside joke underscored by the casting of Candice Bergen as her mom. (We even see pictures of a young Bergen in the main-title montage). Now she’s a sharply funny grandmother to Witherspoon’s two daughters, and it’s fun to watch her tossing off one-liners; frankly, I wish she had more…

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