Time was when women of a certain age had to rely on Mrs. Nancy Meyers and the late Nora Ephron for vaguely risque romantic stories. Well, there’s a new generation of Meyers for a new generation of women. And, boy, is newness needed! We are longer lived, especially the women, but afraid of getting older earlier. Women on the wrong side of 20 seldom are without the fear of getting on the wrong side of 30. In an America where marriage comes later and later and with less and less hope of it lasting a lifetime, romantic comedy is fast turning into a politically revolutionary act. Movies about daring at that certain age therefore could bring together women in facing the problem.

Behold Home Again, the product of a newer, younger Meyers, a story the silliness of which I will let you glean from the trailer. And what a story! It seems to teach women that 40-year-old mother-of-three Reese Witherspoon is worth making a movie about only if, abandoned, she then abandons herself to the romantic ideas of a boy who gets carded when he asks for a drink. Isn’t that dreadfully bittersweet, and something of an embarrassment? How did we end up here? What can we learn from the poetess of Boomer rebellion?