The 2008 supporting-actress nominees are recalled; asked whom to drop for DeWitt, one host cuts Amy Adams, likened to Alex Smith. — Bill Simmons
The strange, memorable live music is praised. — Bill Simmons
A speech that says the movie’s title is enjoyed. — Bill Simmons
The trumpet player’s rehearsal-dinner shout-out to Ethan drains the life from Hathaway’s face. — Bill Simmons
Sidney’s Neil Young song at the wedding is praised for his beautiful voice, with jokes that he should be in a band.
Debra Winger is chosen, with research on roles she turned down or lost: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fatal Attraction, Broadcast News, Peggy Sue Got Married, A League of Their Own, and Romancing the Stone after a reported biting incident. — Bill Simmons
Winger’s career is discussed: Urban Cowboy’s overwhelming screen presence, An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment making her the biggest young actress.
Her reputation for on-set conflict is reviewed, including reported clashes with co-stars on An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment and with the Wonder Woman star. — Amanda Dobbins
An alternative career path imagines her aging into Diane Keaton parts as a Nancy Meyers muse; she stepped away from Hollywood in the late 1990s. — Bill Simmons
She is felt in every second despite appearing in only about four scenes. — Bill Simmons
Father-daughter movies receive an unqualified apex verdict. — Bill Simmons
San Marino receives an emphatic yes. — Bill Simmons
Dads receive a tentative but explicit probably-not verdict. — Bill Simmons
Wedding movies receive an apex case because this film builds an entire happy story around the wedding. — Amanda Dobbins
The film is credited with helping start a 1990s wave including Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Wedding Planner, and The Wedding Singer. — Amanda Dobbins
Dustin Hoffman wandered onto the Blockbuster shoot as a friend of Nancy Meyers; the chateau lunch interior is the Greystone Mansion; Iris's cottage was built in a field in Surrey with the interiors on soundstages; it snowed during the shoot; Amanda's house exterior is near the Huntington Gardens in San Marino; Iris is also the name of one of Jude Law's daughters
Dustin Hoffman was walking down the street, saw a movie shoot at a Blockbuster, and because Nancy Meyers is his friend they put him in the scene; it may have been in Larchmont, since there was a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf next door back then.
The beautiful chateau lunch scene was filmed inside the Greystone Mansion with a different home as exterior; Kate Winslet's England house was completely built in a field in Surrey, with soundstages for the interiors, which is where much of the $85 million went, and it snowed during the shoot, which is rare.
The exterior of Cameron Diaz's house is near the Huntington Gardens in San Marino by Pasadena; Iris, Kate Winslet's character, is also the name of one of Jude Law's daughters, which one website suggested was deliberate but could not be confirmed; Iris and Graham sound like siblings.
Apex Mountain is defined, with Craig asked to correct it, as the point of most objective power in a career, not a personal favorite, given the context of the movie and the movie itself; all four stars and Nancy Meyers are to be assessed.
Cameron Diaz is a firm no: 2006 is the very beginning of her slowing down, her peak being the plateau from There's Something About Mary in 1998 through Charlie's Angels and Shrek in 2001, before Vanilla Sky and Gangs of New York; on this press tour she described going movie to movie without stopping, and she has since retired from acting.
Jack Black is argued as the one yes: this follows School of Rock in 2003, King Kong and Tenacious D, and he peters off afterward into voice work and the Goosebumps movies; another host says his apex is School of Rock, the one movie associated with him, and the panel settles on the 2002 to 2006 run as peak Jack Black.
Kate Winslet is on the rise rather than at her apex: she has had many peaks, Titanic catapulted her, nobody thinks The Holiday is her best work, and she won her Oscar in 2008, after this, for The Reader, called a terrible movie, the same year as Revolutionary Road.
Jude Law's apex of hotness is debated between this movie, as rich, handsome, jazz-loving dad Graham Simpkins, and The Talented Mr. Ripley in a rowboat in Italy wearing linens; his career apex is Ripley, with an Oscar nomination, after which it was a gradual decline through Closer, Cold Mountain and I Heart Huckabees without ever carrying a movie, Alfie being a non-hit during the Sienna Miller scandal.
An argument that Jude Law is in his apex now, doing whatever he wants in The Young Pope, the Harry Potter spinoff and Marvel movies, is heard, but for actual power and hotness it is Talented Mr. Ripley, which should get its own episode at 20 years old this December.
Nancy Meyers's apex is not this but likely Something's Gotta Give, a critical breakthrough with Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves in 2003 when studio comedies still made money, plus Frances McDormand and Jon Favreau in a really good cast; Home Again is her daughter's movie that she produced; so the only possible apex here, and probably not even, is Jack Black.
There are few casting what-ifs because Nancy Meyers insisted she wrote it with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz in mind and cast Jack Black very early; her quoted reasoning is that he is not Clark Gable but adorable and lovable, what most guys look like if they are lucky, and deserves a great girl, so she fixed him up with Kate Winslet.
The reply is that all of that is true except why make him sing weird movie scores like Driving Miss Daisy in a Blockbuster with goofy faces, which is a turn-off and lowering standards rather than everyman; if he were not coming off Tenacious D and School of Rock, when his persona was a guy who sings in movies, it might have been different.
The character is annoying, with a little overacting, a friend rather than someone to kiss; one host rooted for Kate Winslet to end up with Arthur, since Miles believes he is in a relationship with a dumb actress (played by 'Shannon Sossman' as transcribed, of 40 Days and 40 Nights) until five minutes before the end.
Counterpoint: the Cameron Diaz movie is better than the Kate Winslet movie, but a pretty, smart, funny girl liking a guy who seems to have no business dating her makes one host like them more; the objection is restated as the character and the lack of chemistry, not Jack Black's looks, and Kate Winslet, who is very good and makes acting look easy, is made to settle for the friend.
Interviews all insist Meyers had the two women in mind and wanted a character for someone like Jack Black; for Jude Law some things were changed, and the way Cameron Diaz and Nancy Meyers talk about him taking the role carries the subtext of whether Jude Law can play a good, appealing, endearing guy.
Writing a script for Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Jack Black and simply getting them says a lot about Meyers's power, rare for any director let alone a woman director; or she is very good at controlling the narrative and would not let other names into the conversation.
Homeexchange.com is the first item: living in someone else's home on a whim was not mainstream in 2006, maybe a two-week rental, but it has been totally validated by the last five years and is as seamless now as the movie made it look, with the show-up-and-see-what-you-find thrill or the wish you had picked a hotel.
Los Angeles at Christmas is truly underrated and the movie did it justice: quiet with no traffic, a coat at night and warm sun by day, Christmas music playing; the drive onto Sunset off the PCH with no cars is saved as a nitpick.
Celebrating the art of movie trailers has aged well: in 2006 trailers were still corny voiceover work, but the film knew they mattered, the Ringer now runs a trailer bracket, Cameron Diaz's 'that's why they pay me the big bucks' moment with the Lindsay Lohan trailer shows the cynical side, and 'now it looks like a hit' with Katherine Hahn and John Krasinski shows the movie invested in the changing landscape.
The Hans Zimmer score is very lovely and the soundtrack, with the White Stripes for the bed dance, James Taylor's Merry Little Christmas, the Phil Spector Christmas album and a 'Neretha Franklin' (as transcribed) cover of You Send Me, cues every song perfectly; Zoe, picked up from the train, recognized the music in the car, and it conveys a feeling that is very Nancy Meyers.
Jude Law's handsomeness is timeless, as is how he dresses, the hot tweedy British guy; men in L.A. all dress the same, so England or Boston professors would raise the odds, and only Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is as defined by one person's hotness.
Jude Law is objectively hotter than Hugh Grant but gives the same tweedy appeal as Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, which one host calls the hottest Hugh Grant ever at a too-impressionable age, while another never believed Grant as a heartthrob; the panel agrees Jude Law definitely aged the best.
The L.A. house has aged very well: the exterior is a Wallace Neff house in San Marino by Pasadena, seen when Cameron Diaz talks to Ed Burns from the balcony, classic Spanish architecture and a dream L.A. home.
A present-day series built around direct messages and texting is judged inert. — Bill Simmons
A 1990s period treatment or two people forced together abroad is proposed as the only workable long-form remake. — Bill Simmons
A sequel could make Harry and Sally an older interview couple, explore their 35th anniversary, or center their adult children, but the panel fears an unwanted reboot. — Bill Simmons
Nancy Meyers, Meg Ryan as screenwriter, political-pundit Harry, and a Brentwood/Palisades relocation are proposed and repeatedly challenged because New York is essential.
A divorce-and-reunion sequel is rejected because the characters already resolved their avoidable mistakes. — Bill Simmons
