Peace, love and misunderstanding (2011)

Ebert likes it a bit more than I did, but he, of course, captures the film in his inimitable style.

"Peace, Love & Misunderstanding" is an undemanding formula picture that's a lot of superficial fun and not much more. Would it surprise you that within 24 hours Diane and both of her children have commenced romances with locals, and that many truths will be exchanged between Diane and Grace? Woodstock is presented as a place where the 1969 festival still more or less continues, many of the flower children apparently having never left. It's very upscale in a laid-back way, like Aspen or Telluride, and Grace, for example, seems to have unlimited funds, although there's a reason for that.

 Undemanding, yes, but more than a bit maddening, for someone (me) who lived through the Sixties, even if on the fringes. Fonda's Grace saw everything, did everything, knew everyone: she calls musicians Jimi and Jerry. Her character is actually somewhat wooden; she is a stereotype.

Because Fonda is (very capably) playing a send-up of her image, the character I found most interesting is Catherine Keener's Diane. She's a Manhattan lawyer, nursing anger with her mother after all these years and making it a point not to drink or smoke — as a rebuke, perhaps. She quickly falls under the spell of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a local furniture maker and guitarist, age-appropriate, handsome, understanding. Meanwhile, daughter Zoe locks hearts with Cole (Chace Crawford), even though she is a vegetarian and he is a butcher. Young Jake is smitten with Tara (Marissa O'Donnell), a coffeeshop waitress who wins him with a shy smile and superb latte.

I agree. But the movie has its limitations, and that prevents the characters from being complex. That was probably intentional.

These three interlocking romances mesh with Grace's non-stop adventures and assorted heart-to-heart talks, and that's about the size of it. Director Bruce Beresford seems content to deliver a charming comedy and sidestep the deeper family issues that the film could have addressed. So, all right, on that level, the film works for me. It essentially focuses on the three women, and Fonda, Keener and the fast-rising Elizabeth Olsen look plausibly like three generations from the same genes. Olsen, indeed, looks a great deal like Keener, and that is a sincere compliment. It's the cheekbones when they smile.

Yeah, it worked. Three of four stars? Seems a mite much; two would've been a mite short. So I give it 2½ stars.Joe Morgenstern liked it less than Ebert, and makes some interesting comments. Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it 29%, its public 31%: cruel, but just.