It's Complicated

It’s fair to say that Baldwin has always been an asset to any movie (his “I am God’’ monologue in the 1993 thriller “Malice’’ deserves enshrinement in the great, ludicrous movie-speech hall of fame). But “It’s Complicated’’ unleashes an unabashedly, desperately romantic side of Baldwin that we haven’t seen before. He doesn’t steal this movie so much as grant all Streep’s fluttering and twirling and hand-fanning an exuberant counterweight.

Jane and Jake divorced 10 years ago. He married a younger, harsher woman (Lake Bell), whom we’re meant to hate. The college graduation of Jane and Jake’s son leaves them alone together in a restaurant. Fueled by what a montage of the evening suggests are 20 cocktails and 30 bottles of wine, they wind up in bed together, and the morning after launches the movie into all of its comedy.

She rues the whole thing. But he’s reborn. The look of deep satisfaction on Baldwin’s face is hilarious and, for an American movie, shocking - when has a man made that face after sex with any woman, let alone one as senior as Streep? (Meryl, you know what I mean.) If the movies need a new star, it’s Baldwin’s middle-age executive type, a man capable of having a good time in what’s ostensibly a woman’s world. He’s does it every week on “30 Rock,’’ the closest thing to Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges that we have.

Soon Jake is trying to get Jane to meet him for trysts, which isn’t easy for her since his adultery is what ended their marriage. But his certainty is persuasive. Baldwin might be harder to resist than Streep. Jake starts stalking Jane, who just started dating the nice architect who’s redoing her house. Baldwin spies the other man’s car and does a crouching paramilitary run across Jane’s lawn to get a look at the competition. It’s Steve Martin, and one of the movie’s running gags is that Jane keeps forgetting he exists. Frankly, so do we.