Home Over again'south Hot Guy Is Also Beautiful for Its Hijinks (And Our Own Cruel World)

Come across? Cute enough to be a Glossier model. Photo: Open up Road Films

Something'due south amiss in Habitation Again. Per its trailer, its Meyers-family pedigree, and its leading lady Reese Witherspoon, I expected it to exist jam-packed with cutesy montages of Caucasian couplehood. I expected it to crackle with sexual tension between people over 40. It should have been the ability-sweater-wearing love child of Big Fiddling Lies and Something'southward Gotta Give! This movie should have dazzled me. All the ingredients are there, later on all: the artfully immaculate home, Witherspoon's mischievous smiling, Nancy Meyers herself as a producer. And all the same, somehow, Home Again feels similar a W Elm showroom: warmth-next.

And so what's going on here, exactly? Why am I having trouble finding my Meyers Moment in a movie most Reese Witherspoon existence fawned over by three dudes under 30 who expect like they actually iron their button-downs and went right from high-school homeroom to Guild Monaco, dodging Abercrombie & Fitch and that rancid cologne altogether? Why tin can't I get onboard with this motion-picture show, in which Reese Witherspoon is named "Alice Kinney," in which the boys motility into Alice Kinney's guest house, and in which Alice Kinney begins sleeping with one of them, whose name is Harry, an extremely attractive twenty-something who looks like a Hillsong youth pastor?

Considering therein lies Habitation Again'south large problem: The Hot Guy is too beautiful.

To be clear: This guy glows more than than a Glossier model. Was his confront created by a Pinterest algorithm? Or in the same CW lab that created Nate Archibald? He looks so downright beautiful in Dwelling house Over again that I feel a niggling guilty for daring to write about him — for trying to blazon these words on my own laptop — without wearing silk gloves. He's so pretty that his perfectly shaped ears shan't ever hear Taylor Swift singing "Look What You lot Made Me Practice." I'm convinced the vocal would requite his immaculate skin a slight pimple. It's nearly like a burly homo should wordlessly pass you a business carte before you lot dare cross Harry's threshold: Handle with intendance.

In existent life, this likewise-hot man is named Pico Alexander. And not only is Pico Alexander simply as well beautiful for this movie — he'south besides beautiful for the entire genre of rom-coms. Pico Alexander is non steamy hot; he'south gorgeous. Gorgeous enough to be able to pull off wearing linen. And gorgeous men are not meant for romantic comedies. Consider the genre's stalwarts: Tom Hanks? Affable, not gorgeous. Hugh Grant? Gorgeous … pilus. Matthew McConaughey? Chiseled and rugged. Mark Ruffalo is just regula degula schmegula hot. Richard Gere looks elegant, merely not in a style that would brand you uncomfortable if yous happened to stand backside him in line at the deli. I might be able to entertain an argument that Ryan Reynolds is expert-looking, only he'southward not as gorgeous as Ryan Gosling, and then that actually settles itself. If we wanted to watch a crisp, beautiful person in love, we could skip Home Once more all together and ringlet through Mahershala Ali's Instagram.

Harry'due south boyish hotness messes with the formula of romantic comedies, the paint-by-numbers plotting that makes them comfortable and fun to picket. He doesn't get to be funny or goofy, because his thing is merely "being hot." His personality begins and ends with him beingness a shine talker. His date nights with Alice involve … watching onetime movies. (Note: not Nancy Meyers movies, which would be fine.)

The unmitigated hotness is a trouble within the universe of the film itself, too. If Harry/Pico Alexander were a petty bit less of a J. Crew model, maybe someone (Alice, I'm talking to y'all) would have noticed that in that location's not a lot of there in that location. Harry stays out tardily. He bails on Alice when she invites him to a dinner party and so bougie it's not fifty-fifty on Pinterest, it's on some site I'yard as well broke to fifty-fifty know almost. Blowing her off is supposed to exist his large crime, the thing that shows her that she left her ex for a reason, and that this tall middle-schooler is non worthy of sharing her bed or her Draper James coin. But he doesn't skip dinner for a younger woman or a Drake concert — instead, he's busy rubbing shoulders and smoking cigars with power agents and trying to get his passion project off the footing. Alice dumps him considering she had to stare desperately at an exquisite fix of flatware during dinner instead of being able to show off the blazer-wearing embryo she'due south smooching. Information technology's similar Home Again couldn't decide whether to make Harry the male lead or the guy Alice dates before she realizes a cashmere throw is enough visitor for lonely nights.

Just allow's prepare aside Pico Alexander and his preternatural blink for a moment. Part of the brouhaha around Home Again is that it normalizes the thought of an older adult female sleeping with a younger man and enjoying herself. Merely this already happened with more efficiency this summer in Girls Trip, in which Jada Pinkett Smith locked eyes with Kofi Siriboe (Queen Sugar) in a scene that was borderline Luhrmann-esque in its hot-guy introduction. Girls Trip went where Dwelling Again couldn't: It slyly exploited Siriboe as a prepare piece for the female gaze; it didn't try to brand him cute, serious, and essential to the plot.

There is plenty of room for handsome-plenty-to-have-a-Pantone-color-named-afterward-him actors in Hollywood. (See: Hammer, Armie.) But guys every bit handsome every bit Pico Alexander are rendered flat in romantic comedies, just another piece of that cute Meyers scenery.

Home Again'south Hot Guy Is Too Beautiful for Its Hijinks