In The Land of Women

Jon Kasdan’s screenwriting resume is pretty short. It includes one episode of the short-lived series “Freaks and Geeks” and...well, that’s about it, except for the new major motion picture, “In the Land of Women,” starring Meg Ryan and the O.C.’s Adam Brody. Don’t get too optimistic about this young writer, whose meager talent shot him from amateur TV writing to star-studded film writing fame too soon. Kasdan’s screenwriting and directorial debut is nothing to applaud.

“In the Land of Women” is largely derivative of every other mother-daughter relationship film you’ve seen. Despite the trailer’s implication that the movie revolves around a romantic tryst between Ryan’s on-screen daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart, “Panic Room”) and Brody’s heartbroken Carter, “Women” is primarily concerned with the dynamic between Lucy, her mother Sarah (Ryan), and the personal issues they each tackle.

Sarah, a lonely suburban housewife, suffers from breast cancer and struggles to make a substantive connection with her eldest daughter. Lucy, your typical too-cool-for-school teenager, resents her mother’s apparent lack of power and emotional strength.

While Carter is supposedly the figure who brings the two women together, he really doesn’t do all that much. With a few stern words to Lucy and a couple not-so-memorable walks with Sarah, Kasdan expects us to infer that Carter has transformed the lives of both.

If anything, the main purpose of Kasdan’s snoozer is to bring Ryan back into the silver-screen spotlight. After a disappointing turn in 2004’s “Against the Ropes,” it looked like Ryan’s legacy was destined to be entrenched in romantic comedy classics like “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” However, with “In the Land of Women,” Ryan truly does redefine herself, but not in a good way.

From the moment she appears on screen, the most captivating aspect of Ryan’s performance is her awkwardly plump lips and painfully stretched and lifted face. Thank you, Hollywood, for sucking the innocence and natural beauty from yet another one of America’s sweethearts.

Ryan is barely convincing as a mother, trying to fill the shoes of movie mother greats like Susan Sarandon and Diane Keaton, while still holding onto the happy-go-lucky mannerisms of Kathleen Kelly in “You’ve Got Mail.” However, Ryan does do a surprisingly solid job when it comes to the more heart-wrenching scenes. The day before she undergoes a mastectomy, Ryan transforms from calm worry to desperate hopelessness while she sits in the rain, ultimately exchanging a passionate comfort kiss with Brody.

Brody, like Ryan, shows us nothing new. He’s still that loveable not-so-nerdy-looking nerd who’s quick with the one-liners.

However, he fails to bring the necessary depth to a character who’s meant to acutely affect the lives of the women he meets. Brody appears as nothing more than a friendly, lovelorn jokester who is unintentionally swept up into Stewart’s clichéd teenage life and Ryan’s rambling, anecdotal dog walks.

Perhaps the only redeeming factor of “Women” is the performance of veteran acting great Olympia Dukakis (“Steel Magnolias,” “Moonstruck,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus”). Dukakis’ comically edgy turn as Brody’s cranky grandmother keeps you in stitches even as the rest of the movie moves at a snail’s pace. From answering the door in the nude to constantly lecturing Brody on her much-anticipated death, Dukakis more than fills the role of the wise-yet-caustic matron.

Despite being somewhat miscast, Ryan, Stewart, and Brody possess the acting chops to gently carry “In the Land of Women” to a possible Golden Globe pity-nomination. But Kasdan’s script gives the actors little to work with. Instead of achieving characters of depth and complexity, Kasdan’s characters are nothing more than stereotypical.

The lines he created for Ryan and Stewart are stilted and, at times, even laughable. After Ryan asks Stewart to take Brody to a movie to cure his loneliness, Stewart replies, “That is so lame. That is, like, the definition of lame.” Does Kasdan know anything about living, breathing teenage girls, or has he just read excerpts from “The Baby-sitter’s Club”?

—Staff writer Erin A. May can be reached at emay@fas.harvard.edu.