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Created Feb 15, 2013 08:15PM PST • Edited Mar 19, 2023 03:10PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Perfect credits lead to a fitfully entertaining movie about some monumentally smug people in Heartburn. Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson – in his prime – lead the credits. The great Mike Nichols directs, fifteen years after directing Nicholson in the scandalous Carnal Knowledge.

   The self-absorbed subjects are Mainstream Media A-listers, back when that meant an unchallenged spot in the 1% Club. It didn’t mean they weren’t massively annoying, notwithstanding their Ivy League panache.

   Nicholson is spectacular however, and Streep perfect. Throw in a choice performance from a youngish Steven Hill and you’ve got an acting tour-de-force with enough high points to cover all the kvetching, which is a lot.

   Heartburn tells the lightly fictionalized tale of Nora Ephron’s marriage to Carl Bernstein, of Woodward & Bernstein fame. Thus it details a doomed marriage from the woman’s POV. Perhaps to justify her bad choices, Ephron paints both her husband and father as lovable rascals. Were it not for these men, Heartburn would be an irredeemable chick-flick. Instead it’s a showcase for Jack Nicholson and Steven Hill.

   Speaking of Carl Bernstein, the guy has been played by two of the greatest actors of all time. Nicholson here and Dustin Hoffman in All The President’s Men. Wonder how Nora Ephron felt about that?

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Jack Nicholson’s got an internal light that burns brightly. His entire roguish charm is on display as a man with too much panache for one woman. The eyebrows alone are worth watching.

   Meryl Streep makes even simple declarations interesting, as when she draws out a declaration of love in a way both supremely dramatic and entirely natural. Brilliant! She also comes across as a plain woman well put together, another feat of acting since she’s channeling the plain looking Nora Ephron.

   Steven Hill is a revelation as her roguish Father, at least to those of us who only know him as the elderly DA on Law & Order.

   The supporting cast is a who’s who:

   • Jeff Daniels as a very understanding magazine editor.
   • Maureen Stapleton as a maternal therapist.
   • Stockard Channing & Richard Masur as fellow media swells.
   • Catherine O’Hara as a brash Texan newscaster and Milos Forman as her suger-daddy husband.
   • Kevin Spacey as a punk thief. Yes, really.

   Then there are the bit players, including several from the Streep clan.

   • Mamie Gummer as Meryl’s daughter is actually Meryl’s daughter. No wonder Mama Meryl was able to get her to sing The Wheels on the Bus.
   • Dana Streep, Meryl’s sister, and Mary Streep, her Mother, are extras in a dinner party scene.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    The quotidian story occaisionally drones on like a bad marriage. It perks up whenever Jack comes on, or Steven Hill for that matter. Indeed, men get the best lines in Nora Ephron’s otherwise sub-par screenplay. How is it that she writes her best stuff for the opposite sex? For instance, her husband’s doppelgänger characterizes himself during a party-game thusly “Columnist, In Love, Married, Father, Shortstop”. Perfect.

    The film is often very charming, especially in the long preamble to the marriage’s dissolution. For instance, upon learning they are going to be parents, the young couple sings every song they know about babies. I’m guessing that Mike Nichols had as much to do with that as did Ephron’s screenplay.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play OK 2.5

    Mawkish and obnoxious are not qualities that make characters endearing.

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Good 3.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    The movie/novel’s husband and wife are a columnist and food writer respectively. He’s not even suggested to be a political columnist. Of course, they are doppelgängers for Carl Bernstein, the investigative reporter, and Nora Ephron, the essayist and future screenwriter.

    Ephron’s story unconsciously speaks to the post-traditional society just then coming into the mainstream, where a therapist is just as likely as a mother to attend to a bride and the decision to have children is fraught with career uncertainty. It also unconsciously shows the wealthy Mainstream Media swells who are increasingly reviled today. Disconnected from real commerce, they live like gentry, spend money like water and have ever-present servants under foot. No wonder they can’t relate to real people.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0