Baby boomers lament their muddled love lives in Nancy Myers’ latest glimpse into the lifestyles of the rich and the whiny in It’s Complicated.

Much like her Something’s Gotta Give, Myers’ latest film features rich white people pushing 60, stuck in sordid relationships (of their making), and reminiscing the self importance of their 1960s heyday with the occasional refer hit. You know, the kind who made a killing on the stock market before the financial sector crashed.

Meryl Streep stars as Jane, a 10 year divorcee urged to get back into the dating game. Alec Baldwin plays Jake, her ex-husband now married to a nutter TV producer (Lake Bell) and her equally loony son (Emjay Anthony).

When a night out leads to a drunken sexual encounter, the once married pair find themselves embroiled in a full blown love affair.

 In one of several bang-my-head-against-the-wall inducing scenes between Jane and her posse of wine slurping girlfriends, the morality of her situation is assessed, and justification is found. And so Jane shakes off the chains of her sexual repression with a steady diet of ex-hubby.

Yet it seems that having it all is never enough: Jane wants to be loved, not just boned.

Enter Adam (Steve Martin), an architect who is also recovering from a divorce.

Now with two men lusting over her, empathy is asked of the viewer for Jane’s predicament, and it is a tall order to sympathise with a once dry as a bone WASP, who now has to contend with two (albeit wrinkled) penises while picking ripe tomatoes from her lavish garden situated on her vast estate.

Yet in spite of how unlikeable these characters are, how pretentious the story is, and how pedestrian its direction, hating this film is not possible, thanks to the performances of its actors.

There are many things that can be said about Myers, but one that is absolutely true is that she is an actors’ director. Somehow, in some way, she manages to have her actors free themselves of their inhibitions and turn in compelling and always entertaining work. 

The anomaly which is Meryl Streep (a gazillionth award winning 60 year old box office star), of course, delivers. But it is Alec Baldwin who does the near impossible: he steals a Meryl Streep film form Meryl Streep.

Capitalizing on the new found fame brought on from his work in TV land (30 Rock, SNL), Baldwin is in career best made as the jocular and tenacious ex-hubby, who is dearly paying for his past transgressions.

Hell, even Steve Martin comes out smelling roses in this one, which is – strictly speaking – a film for fans of the actors involved. Or for those over 50.