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When one looks at Meg Ryan's career, a hackneyed expression comes to mind: "One step forward, two steps back." And then another hackneyed expression comes to mind almost immediately afterward: "The law of diminishing returns."
Meg Ryan became quite famous by starring in a series of romantic comedies. Some were pretty good, as such things go, like When Harry Met Sally... and Prelude To A Kiss. Some were pretty crappy -- even for romcoms -- like French Kiss and I.Q. That's how it goes when you're a movie actor, right? Not everything you do is a home run, and sometimes you get pigeonholed based on the last really successful thing you did. But the idea that she is known only -- or even primarily -- as America's Sweetheart, the romcom queen, seems to be a horrific prospect to Meg Ryan. Or so one would surmise from her by-now well-established career pattern: for each peppy little romcom Ryan does, she has to cancel out the taint of actually pleasing a crowd by doing something totally different that no one cares one tiny bit about, and which is generally beyond her pretty meager talents as an actor.
People tend to think of this tactic as something Ryan came up with in the mid-'90s, circa Courage Under Fire, which even earned her some Oscar buzz. (No, seriously, it did.) But Ryan's penchant for doing romcom penance with ill-advised "serious" movies she can't carry on her tiny, perky shoulders dates all the way back to...well, the early '90s, anyway, when she followed the twin triumphs of Sally... and Prelude with her role as glorified groupie Pamela Courson in The Doors. And so it goes: Sleepless In Seattle is followed by Flesh And Bone and When A Man Loves A Woman; I.Q. and French Kiss with Restoration and Courage Under Fire; Addicted To Love with Hurlyburly; You've Got Mail with Proof Of Life; and now Kate & Leopold with In The Cut and the much-delayed Against the Ropes.
The pros of being America's Sweetheart are obvious: money, some power, fame. But the cons nearly outweigh the pros, and aren't immediately apparent: establishing yourself through your roles as, basically, America's quirky, cutesy, virginal girlfriend -- before whom countless obstacles materialize so that she can't even give up so much as a kiss (with tongue) until the finale scene -- means that you're achieving fame for a persona that, while initially winning and charming, only gets more annoying with time (and as you get so old that the Pollyanna routine is disingenuous and unseemly).
The law of diminishing returns, right? Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally... was, at the time, a moderately fresh take on an Annie Hall for the early '90s. Annie Reed in Sleepless In Seattle similar, in most respects, only older and shadier (not only was she basically stalking Tom Hanks's Sam Baldwin, but she was already engaged to another man). By the time You've Got Mail came wheezing down the pike, Ryan -- as Kathleen Kelly (just the latest in the sea of Katharines, Kays, Kates, and Maggies -- in other words, cutesy, girl-next-door-type womanettes -- Ryan has played) -- was leaning heavily on the crutches she uses to create her romcom heroines: quizzical facial expressions; a ridiculously high-pitched, girlish voice; a scene in which her more-or-less cuckolded boyfriend magnanimously releases her from their relationship with no hard feelings; and a wardrobe of wool jumpers, frumpy flats, and opaque tights that make her look like she's about to embark upon her first day of sixth grade.
Perhaps we should give Ryan the benefit of the doubt there. Maybe the reason Mail is packed with even more romcom clichés than the norm is that Ryan intended it to be her romcom swan song, before bidding the genre adieu forever and remaking herself as a Serious, Grown-Up, Acting Lady, a romcom graduate. Too bad her next serious movie was the commercial flop and PR disaster Proof of Life. Now Ryan was cuckolding a man in real life (and not some schlub, either: Dennis Quaid! Was she insane?), and by all accounts, he was no Bill Pullman or Greg Kinnear, willing to forgive her everything with a cordial kiss on the cheek.
Once Ryan broke up her marriage (at least as far as the public was concerned) by having an affair with her burly co-star Russell Crowe, she tarnished her America's Sweetheart tiara. If Ryan were really serious about taking her career in a different direction for good -- not just with every other movie -- and really wanted to give up her old, cutesy image forever, her scandalous (only not really) affair with Crowe could have been the nail in Kate/Kathleen/Kay/Maggie's coffin. Instead, Ryan begged the public's pardon by playing...another Kate. This Kate even got to have her name in the title. And whie she is wooed and won by a dashing foreigner with a funny accent (eek!), Kate is safely uncoupled when they meet; the only other men in her life are her ex, her brother, and her boss (phew!).
Now we're back at that point in the cycle when Ryan is "reminding" us -- in another serious movie neither we nor anyone we know plans to see -- that she can do more than squinch up her face adorably and wear pilgrim collars. In The Cut might have been a compelling thriller if the trailer didn't give away every single plot point, in it, Ryan pulls a Farrell, picking up sloppy seconds from, in this case, Nicole Kidman. (Which is appropriate, given the reversals in their careers since 'round about, oh, let's say, 1995, when Ryan turned down the lead in To Die For, which Nicole Kidman won instead, and in which she satirically appropriates all of Ryan's romcom mannerisms for a hilariously Meg-ian performance.)
Is In The Cut going to be successful? We're going to go waaay out on a limb and say no. Will it accomplish what Ryan wants it to, winning her the critical acclaim she has been seeking, in every non-romcom role she's attempted in the past fifteen years? No. So where does Ryan go from there? Is..."away" too much for us to hope for? If she does another romcom, she'll be cloying and annoying. If it's another ponderous, serious pile of crap, she'll be desperate and annoying.
Meg Ryan is pretty much out of moves. We've already seen her try everything in her back of tricks and tics. Our store of goodwill toward her is perilously low, if not entirely empty. She's still well known, but as a squeaky, irritating simp. It's time for her to take some time away from the business, reflect, regroup, and most importantly, leave us alone for a few years. Or decades. Or forever. Seriously, would any of us really miss her?
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