If a filmmaker is lucky, he or she stumbles across one moment of truth in a film. Something’s Gotta Give, a mostly funny, if pedestrian, romantic comedy, has one such moment shortly after Erica Barry (Keaton), a fiftysomething playwright, has just had sex after a very long draught. It’s a heartbreaker: a moment of rare honesty in this gaffe-happy film about sex and the single girl … that is, when the girl stops being a girl and turns into an emotionally shut-off middle-aged woman. Keaton has lost none of the spunk, sass, and ditzbomb charm of her Annie Hall days; she is, quite simply, marvelous. Too bad her similarly iconic co-star is such a toad. Jack never stops being Jack, to great distraction. What they say about sexual maturity might be analogous to the performances here: A man peaks out somewhere around 18, while a woman of a certain age is just hitting her stride.
Opened 12/12/03