Something's Gotta Give
First screened in December 2003 / Most recently screened and reviewed in November 2025
Director: Nancy Meyers. Cast: Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Amanda Peet, Keanu Reeves, Frances McDormand, Paul Michael Glaser, Jon Favreau, Rachel Ticotin. Screenplay: Nancy Meyers.

 In Brief:  Meyers is slipshod in style but vibrantly fills a storytelling gap in our culture. Keaton, Nicholson sing.

VOR: ④  I'd hoped that commercial and critical success might augur more films like it. A still-rare dive into the pathos and humor of later-life romance.


   
Photo © 2003 Columbia Pictures / Warner Bros.
Two reasons for rewatching, one about mothers and daughters, one about fathers and sons.

First: last week, I read Diane Keaton's totally captivating 2011 memoir Then Again, which interleaves her own memories of a basically happy upbringing and an outwardly fulfilling but emotionally complex adulthood with her own mother's different story of a tougher childhood, abandoned early by her father, and a long life of happy parenting but stubborn uncertainties about her own calling, her own purpose and satisfaction. Sometimes Keaton is narrativizing her mom's experiences as she passed them down, but quite often Dorothy speaks directly to us, via some of the many hundreds of hand-written journal pages she left behind. The structure is both creative and moving, the stories indelible in joy and sorrow and their many admixtures, and the prose from each woman a flavorful, multifaceted, differently vivid pleasure in itself.

I cannot recommend Then Again enough, which accumulates further riches in describing the years of Keaton's own later-in-life parenting, though she also has plenty to say about her films and her partnerships, creative and otherwise. To quote her, "Something's Gotta Give will always be my favorite movie," so there was no question I'd have wanted to revisit it in the wake of the memoir, and as a wake for the dearly, unexpectedly departed Keaton. I wish the scenes with her and Amanda Peet as her daughter were written and directed on a par with what Nancy Meyers managed in the Keaton/Nicholson sequences, but that bond still popped in a way it wouldn't have in my last viewing, 22 years ago.

Second: I read the first 200 pages of Then Again last week on a plane to Seattle, where I could cook for my dad, help tend to his needs, and keep his mood cheerful before, during, and after a heart surgery (which went well, and his prognosis is great). In recent years, Dad has added Something's Gotta Give and The Holiday to his list of favorite movies, alongside long-timers Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, Reds (also Keaton!), and The Bridge on the River Kwai. He surely must be one of Nancy Meyers's biggest fans among retired war vets and ex-commanders of artillery batallions. On his first night home from the hospital, he wanted me to nestle in next to him to watch Jack and Diane.

I had forgotten what a major role heart failure plays in the plot of Something's Gotta Give, with Nicholson offering surprisingly realistic renditions of cardiac distress at varying degrees, especially for a comedy. Dad did remember, having seen the movie so many more times than I have, but I don't think it's why he chose it that evening. The echo didn't bother him at all. He just giggled afresh at all his favorite moments, which are plentiful. We both got tired before finishing the film, tapping out after Keaton's very greatest acting achievement in it: the quietly kaleidoscopic run-through in tight closeup of almost every human emotion in the wake of Erica having made love with Nicholson's Harry, only to realize he doesn't want to spend the rest of that night in bed with her or necessarily participate in any of the romantic daydreams she has, to her own surprise, concocted at lightning speed. It's a peak moment to pause after, for Keaton, for Nicholson, and for the movie as a whole.

Dad and I talked so much every other day and night I stayed in Seattle (as I did with his wife, and as I did with her kids, who live closer by) that we never finished Something's Gotta Give till I got home to Chicago. (I spent five days under the misimpressiom that Erica and Harry remain apart that night, when in fact he returns to her bedroom only minutes later, tail stoutly between his legs.) I don't love the movie as much as my father does, especially given the stilted and overlong exposition and some lingering shoddiness in mismatched editing, supporting character integration, and uneven formal artistry (those process shots!), all of which are familiar from other Meyers movies. But just as familiar is her knack for casting the right stars and allowing their chemistry to gradually deepen even as they get more relaxed—two things that are tricky to pull off in tandem, in any movie.

I certainly love Something's Gotta Give more now, because of Diane and Dorothy, and because of Dad. I guess I wound up folding her book together with my real-time experience, just as she braided her life story with her mom's. The takeaway from all those narratives, including Something's Gotta Give, is to spend good time with people while you can—including your parents, if you're lucky enough to have good ones—and also to resist any assumption that everything declines in middle age, or late middle age, or even incipient old age. Diane adopted at 50, Dorothy had a few years with her unexpected grandchildren before her memory went away, and Dad has enough going on at 75 that I was partly in Seattle to make sure he'd do less of it while he recuperates. Some things have to give sometimes, some things give out temporarily, and everything will eventually. But not today. Grade: B–

(I originally wrote this capsule on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)

Academy Award Nominations:
Best Actress: Diane Keaton

Golden Globe Nominations and Winners:
★Best Actress (Musical/Comedy): Diane Keaton
Best Actor (Musical/Comedy): Jack Nicholson

Other Awards:
National Board of Review: Best Actress (Keaton)
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