Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with the Slate Spoiler Special

podcast on It's Complicated, the new Nancy Myers comedy with Merrill Streep and Alec Baldwin.

Joining me today in Slate's studio is Willa Paskin. Hi, Willa. Hi. Who is a contributor to

double X and also an editor at Black Book. Is that right? That is correct. And I'm really

happy you could join me on this movie right before the holidays.

I saw it and I really realized that I had to spoil it. I had to talk about it with someone because I can't decide how I feel about it's complicated. I feel like I don't hate it as much as I'm

supposed to and yet I can't completely embrace it and love it either because it's got so many

glaring problems. But it also has so much charm and it has such a kind of barreling energy. So anyway,

I want to hear what do you think and also talk us through the story of it. Sure. I actually

had the inverse reaction, which is to say that I saw it at a screening with a crowd full of people

and I loved it. And then I left and wondered if I was being way too nice to it just because I was

in a group of people that were laughing so hard and it was so charming. I recently called that the Churro effect in a review of Up in the Air, right?

Where it's tasty on the onsite consumption and then it kind of sours later on.

Right.

So, okay, so we had inverse reactions.

So let's start with the story.

Everybody's probably seen the previews of the trailers at this point, but essentially, Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin have been divorced for 10 years as the movie begins.

Right, they have three children. She lives in a beautiful house. She seems pretty content with her

divorced life. And they run off to New York to go to their youngest son's graduation and end up

getting wasted, reminiscing, and falling back into bed together and discovering a very

passionate relationship.

So they start sleeping together again, essentially.

...