Not half complicated enough for this demographic

In good times for cinema, it seems only films aimed at the middle-aged are shoddy and patronising

YOU KNOW an audience can be too grateful. Irish audiences, I feel, have always been too grateful. Our propensity for the standing ovation is quite shaming: we are always straining to please, and to be pleased.

It is the truth universally acknowledged that bad times make good cinema.

Historically the grimmest of recessions have produced the most exotic musicals, the grittiest of dramas, the funniest romantic comedies.

It may not be too noble – and I am sure that Irish Timesreaders would never do it – but the last fortnight, which added catastrophic scandal and then natural catastrophe to our bankruptcy, has been a pretty good time to stick your fingers in your ears and dash to the nearest cinema.

Certainly, on a freezing Monday night in Dublin last week the multiplex in Parnell Street was packed, mostly with young people. On Friday the Savoy in O'Connell Street, now somehow the old lady of Dublin picture palaces, had a full house in its main cinema for the science-fiction fantasy Avatar. On Saturday at the cinemas in Dundrum shopping centre every single film for the main evening show was booked out – except The Road.

We do want to see The Road– a story of post-apocalyptic survival, apparently – but not yet, thanks.

The thing about recession cinema is that it must be, if not exactly comforting, then at least enjoyable. For example Up in the Air, the new George Clooney film, is actually about a man who tours America firing people. It's interesting.

Avatar, on the other hand, is about blue creatures who are 10 feet tall. There's a bit of a debate about what exactly Avatar's subject is – environmental disaster, America's foreign wars, racism – but it is really about having a wonderful escape from January for three hours, and getting to sit with a lot of strangers as you all wear 3D glasses.

Both these films, Up in the Airand Avatar, are aimed at a general audience. George Clooney is a middle-aged hero – come on, George will never see 45 again. The queen of sci-fi, Sigourney Weaver, has a supporting role in Avatar. But neither Up in the Airnor Avataris marketed at the middle-aged demographic.

No, for a film aimed at the middle-aged demographic we must talk about It's Complicated.

Now, as a cinema-goer in (late) middle age you have to ask yourself just how grateful you must be. It seems that the cinema-goer in (late) middle age, like many a wallflower, has to be a pushover when she is eventually asked up. The mere fact that films are made for her is meant to be enough to have her trilling arias of praise, not to say roaring in ecstasy.

It's Complicated, has been greeted with a great deal of fuss and congratulation. This fuss and congratulation was delivered on the grounds that it is directed by a woman – Nancy Myers. And also on the grounds that It's Complicatedprovides a rare cinema sighting of people over the age of 40 existing, occasionally, as sexual beings. Meryl Streep is 60. We are supposed to be delighted about this.

Of course there are lovely things in It's Complicated– chief of which are Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, the two lead actors. Alec Baldwin is so nice and fat, for one thing. He is well able for Meryl, who is now a sort of cinematic saint, swathed in a lot of pale cheese cloth and having a ball.

And it is refreshing to look at a cinema screen and notice a male’s plastic surgery: Steve Martin’s eyes seeming smaller than ever. Meryl only seems to have had her neck done.

And cinema-goers have always been happy to watch the comedic goings on of extraordinarily prosperous lovers who apparently never have to go to work in order to earn the money for the sports cars, the jeeps, the extensions to already roomy and well-appointed kitchens. Hell, nobody has ever asked asked how Captain von Trapp earned his money.

No, the problem with It's Complicatedis that it's not half complicated enough – its script cannot keep up with or even draw alongside the sophistication of its actors, or the expectations of its audience. Its crude nature is revealed near the end, when we are suddenly shown Meryl tending a picture-perfect vegetable garden, which we have never seen before. There is Meryl tending this extraordinary crop of vegetables, wearing a straw hat.

A gasp went up from the female audience at the sight of this vegetable garden, so perfect, so impossible to maintain without a full-time gardener and so covetable by every female who has ever read an interior decorating magazine.

We knew then how badly we had been patronised by It's Complicated. It was the vegetable garden more than anything else – more than the embarrassing women friends, more than Alec Baldwin's fake tan, the anonymous children and the fact that no one wants to even kiss Steve Martin – that showed us how shoddy It's Complicatedis.

Let’s not be too grateful for it – there are other things to see.