Don’t get me wrong. I love Jack Nicholson as I’m sure all, or most of you do. I probably have every Nicholson movie ever made in my private home collection. But truth be told, Nicholson’s most recent flicks having been laying enough turds in the water as to require EPA citation. Of which Something’s Got To Give is possibly the most egregious example. To be kind, let’s not even get into Anger Management or All About Schmidt. This is now.

Interestingly, I’m looking at a review in the L.A, Times that headlines the phrase “laughs give way to torturous ending” then proceeds to lavish unnecessary praise upon the film. Don’t let this bit of literary juggling fool you, though. I counted maybe two laughs, whereas Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa had the audience where I was attending picking their asses out of the aisles.

But torturous is even a generous description of the malaise I experienced waiting for something to truly give in this old guy starts dating old broad comedy. You know what the ending’s going to be and it should have gotten there 30 minutes earlier if not for unnecessary attempts to inject Keeanu Reeves’ young doctor character into it more than it deserves. That Reeves is, uncommonly, the best thing in this whole project has got to tell you something, perhaps about the writing itself, as Nicholson reverts to old Jack schtick: the eye squints and the forehead rolls; while Keaton does her head bob, look to the left, look to the right, ain’t I still cute for an old lady grin to sell their respective lines. “Overamped” was a word used in the New York Post review to pretty much tell you the same thing.

Basically, Nicholson’s playing himself- a bloated womanizer with an evaporating hairline whose money and don’t give a shit attitude does the talking with younger, intellect-challenged women who find him a lot more intriguing than guys their own age. Nicholson’s dating Keating’s daughter [Amanda Peet], and Nicholson’s found raiding the ice box of Keaton’s beach house in his underwear. Keaton’s a famous playwright so that explains her degree of wealth.

That Jack in his underwear garners the film’s single biggest laugh foreshadows the fact that you as a viewer are in some serious trouble. Peet is best playing goofballs as she does in The Whole Nine Yards, but here she’s pretty much the dead serious career girl who works for Christie’s Auction House. Dead serious meaning that she’s on to Jack and will never fall for Nicholson, the Internet-record label mogul with the richly appointed New York town house.. Ah, but her mom and her menopause will.

Nicholson’s about to make love to Peet and suffers a heart attack, via Viagra- the first of many wheel him into the hospital on a gurney sight gags. In hospital gown, Jack even goes so far as to bare his ass for another cheap stunt to bolster this film’s sagging morale.

[Keaton even takes a stab with a quickly delivered nude scene that, from certain angles, you sense is being aided and abetted by a body double.] Reeves, meanwhile, as Jack’s cardiologist, falls like a ton of EKG’s for Keaton and his oblivious to her I’m 20 years older than you lectures on their first date. From here you’ve got nice guy Reeves pursing Keaton; Keaton pursuing Jack [after he’s been confined to rest at her beach house] and Peet finally marrying a nice Jewish boy.

All the while, Keaton’s documenting her drama with Jack as cheap dialogue for her new Broadway play with Nicholson put off feeling that he had been used to accomplish this. And there you pretty much have the set up. With the inevitable ending looming way off in the distance presaged by Keaton’s bringing up Paris while she and Jack are rutting during a thunderstorm, the rest of the film is a pile on of unsubstantial attempts to prompt smirks or solicit any kind of emotions from the audience about old folk getting it on. And it just doesn’t happen.