With this selection, the watch-list for the Marriage and the Movies course finally enters the modern era, by which I arbitrarily take to mean movies that were made after I was actually born. The power couple here is played by Meryl Streep, who looks astonishingly young in this movie, and Jack Nicholson, who looks pretty much looks the same as he always does. If you pay attention, you’ll also spot Kevin Spacey as a minor thug in his first ever film appearance.

Both partners here are journalist-types, Nicholson’s Mark Forman being a political columnist based in Washington D.C. and Streep’s Rachel Samstat being a New York food writer. Samstat meets Forman at a wedding and despite being warned that he is a womanizer and is horrible to women, feels an immediate attraction. He returns her interest and they soon get married, even though Samstat has been divorced before and claims to not believe in marriage. For a moment after her first child is born, Samstat believes that she has found true happiness. But as you might expect from a film with this title, this moment doesn’t last.

I have to confess that I’m immediately biased because this is yet another film about middle-aged, affluent, WASPish types and their domestic problems and I’m really, really tired of them. I’m not saying that infidelity and divorces aren’t worth talking about, but unless you have something genuinely new to add to the topic, I’m not sure why anyone should pay attention to what are essentially first world problems. And unfortunately for Heartburn, however earnest it is, it says nothing that hasn’t been said better in a multitude of other works.

I do have to credit Streep for a very fine performance, especially in the scenes in which her character can’t quite believe how happy she is. Nicholson however is Nicholson and I’m not sure that casting him in this role was the right choice. I’m fairly sure that the scenes of him singing and playing with the baby really are meant to convey tenderness and love, but I can’t help but expect him to start cackling maniacally at any moment and go on a murderous spree. In any case, good or colorful performances aren’t enough to save a rather humdrum premise.

As per my habitual practice, after watching this film I went online to search for information about it. It’s based on a novel by Nora Ephron, and she also wrote the screenplay for the movie version herself. You may know her as the screenwriter for the romantic comedies When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. But the most interesting part is that Ephron apparently based this on her real-life marriage with Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. Apparently he had an affair with Margaret Jay, the daughter of former British Prime Minister James Callaghan and a politician in her own right. I guess it’s uncharitable of me, but I caught myself thinking, “Wow, I’d rather watch a movie from their point of view!” That’s also when I realized how one-sided this movie is since it presents everything only from Samstat’s point of view and portrays her as essentially being faultless. Seen in this light, even the choice of casting Nicholson as the husband to make him look extra villainous feels mean-spirited.

Even if you can forgive it the sin of being Ephron’s personal vehicle for vilifying her ex-husband and his lover, Heartburn remains not so much a bad movie as a movie so pedestrian and unremarkable that it doesn’t seem to have any reason to exist, let alone be watched. It’s essentially a made for television movie with first-rate Hollywood star power.