... or “the oh-so-tortured love lives of the well-heeled West Coast middle classes.” Writer-director Nancy Meyers has a saccharine view of life, as exemplified by the utterly flimsy The Holiday from three years ago, and she brings the full force of her unreal rom-com approach to this saga of marital confusion.

Jane (Meryl Streep) runs a restaurant, has a lovely home, and has finally regained her balance ten years after divorcing lawyer Jake (Alec Baldwin). He is now with young, sultry Agness (Lake Bell) and her little boy from another relationship, but is finding that there are problems there as well. So when the two ex’s converge in New York for their son’s graduation, they get drunk in the hotel bar and the sexual embers are re-ignited. Add lonely architect Adam (Steve Martin) to the mix and we have a rich confection of confused loyalties, regrets and hopes. But confection it most definitely is.

Meyers does create some good comic moments and some beautifully embarrassing situations, but the whole thing is over-written and has two or three false endings, and creating laughs from our unlikely protagonists getting stoned smacks of desperation. Rom-coms only really work when the humour stems from emotional truth; here it feels like it’s grafted on. These people would eat their way out of trouble.

Of the principals Steve Martin impresses most with a largely quiet, contained performance. Alec Baldwin is commanding, solid and has a good comic touch. We are so used to Meryl Streep being extraordinary that she can be granted the occasional outing at half-throttle. All rather resistible.