Film Reviews	Ladies' Man: In the Land of Women by George Sax

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Trailer for "In the Land of Women"

As a first-time filmmaker, Jonathan Kasdan comes across as a likable guy. His debut effort, In the Land of Women, is an often affably amusing, agreeably witty movie. Kasdan, it should be noted, is the son of director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, Body Heat) and the younger brother of Jake Kasdan, who also has a film in current release, The TV Set.

It’s not that In the Land of Women doesn’t have some serious elements. It certainly does. There is life-threatening illness, as well as adultery, identity crises, an alarmingly dotty grandparent and even more. But Kasdan doesn’t allow these really to jeopardize the sense of warm regard he and his movie seem to have for his characters. In fact, what he seems to have aimed for is that awkward, unstable hybrid, the dramedy.

Scene to scene, he’s managed to sustain his approach for a fair amount of the picture’s running time. But not consistently. And at the very end, he caps things off with sentimental improbability.

The young man who ventures into the title’s female realm is Carter (Adam Brody, late of TV’s The O.C.), a mid-20s L.A. screenwriting tyro who’s stuck working for a demanding soft-core porn producer. He’s also stuck without his girlfriend. In the opening scene, she gives him his walking papers.

Conveniently enough, Carter has a colorfully addled and reclusive grandmother (Olympia Dukakis in a nicely tempered comic turn) in a Michigan suburb. Her phone message that she’s going to die soon gives him an opportunity to flee the scenes of his defeats, ostensibly to look after grandma for awhile. So, Carter lands in the verdant, solidly upper-income enclave where she resides in somewhat unkempt gentility. Across the street lives Sarah (Meg Ryan), a lonely housewife he quickly encounters, and her mixed-up teenage daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart). Before very long, Carter is variously confidant, caretaker and counselor to these three.

(I hesitate to mention it, particularly in the present environment of exonerated lacrosse players and embattled shock jocks, but there is a mild off-note in these proceedings. Carter also cooks, makes beds and tackles plumbing problems. Aren’t he and Kasdan poaching in the preserves of gay guys?)

Kasdan has said that the movie’s storyline was inspired by experiences he had over a decade ago (he’s 27) involving a platonic relationship with an older woman and a grave illness he contracted at about the same time. These have been reworked into the movie’s crucial elements, and he’s handled them in a respectable fashion. But even with these sobering topics, Kasdan and his movie are tilted toward a softening, ingratiating tone.

He does have a knack for muffled little explosions of humor, small puffs of wit from within scenes of whimsical self-involvement. Early on, when Carter returns home to tell his mom (JoBeth Williams) that he’s been cut loose she responds as if she’s the victim: “But she was so beautiful, so funny, so bright!”

Kasdan also shows some facility in shaping scenes and working with actors. All the performances are skilled. Brody has developed a wryly winning self-deprecating and ironic style. Ryan—who looks so youthfully svelte she could have played the daughter’s older sister in an older Hollywood—gives Kasdan’s more solemn movements some emotional resonance.

Where Kasdan hasn’t succeeded is in his attempt to combine comically pointed behavioral exaggerations with a delayed coming-of-age story and poignant inspirational observations.

In the Land of Women has the feel of being manufactured from mass-media components, including Lifetime Channel movies and sitcom setups (Kasdan’s first job was writing for Freaks and Geeks). It also seems to contain a few echoes of any number of teen romantic comedies, particularly when it turns to tracking Lucy’s boyfriend problems.

Kasdan may have wanted too much for us to like his movie.