“All happy families are alike; all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.” So Tolstoy says, and while the truth of that statement is so breezily self-evident as to be almost suspicious, The Kids Are All Right seems intent on verifying it. The family at the center of the film is almost boring in their happiness when it opens; when everything falls apart (and it wouldn't be a family drama if it didn't), they seem to be unhappy in a way specific to the structure of their particular relationships.
The family at hand is parented by the un-surnamed Nic and Jules, a middle-aged lesbian couple, and their children Joni (from a Nic pregnancy) and Laser (from a Jules pregnancy). It's a family unit that might have seemed shocking had it appeared in a film 15 years ago, but the film plays it fairly straight (so to speak), focusing on each character's individual quirks instead of playing up the idea of a family headed by a lesbian couple as being especially noteworthy. Which is a strength, to be sure; this is one of the more believable screen families of recent years. Director Lisa Cholodenko goes to great lengths to downplay any notion that the arrangement is in any way odd, and as such, the first scene with the family together is almost a parody of the traditional family dinner scene. Everything is extremely pleasant, perhaps a bit too much so: it doesn't seem as though anything wrong will ever happen to these people.
That current of groovy pleasantness dominates the film for almost half of its running time, which isn't necessarily a complaint. Seeing a group of talented actors settling into their roles and playing off each other is entertaining of its own accord here, even if there isn't a huge amount of drama in the early running; I'm not familiar with the rehearsal that went into this movie, but all of the major players have an easy chemistry with each other, giving the actors a relaxed nature around each other that makes their performances seem easily believable. That might sound like damning with faint praise, but for such a mellow movie, especially one with name actors, it seems lucky that none of them overreaches. In any case, this is one of the best ensemble performances you'll see all year, and it's a testament to the actors (and the script) that so many of the character interactions feel as if they're almost improvised in their naturalness.
The family dynamic is made clear early on: Nic ( Annette Bening) is the family breadwinner, a Type A doctor who hits the wine perhaps a bit too often. Bening has perhaps the least favorable role to play in the film, as Nic seems to be the least fun member of the entire family; she's a bit too brittle and straight-laced to be very fun to watch, as if we were watching home videos of Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, this all makes it difficult to sympathize with her during the drama of the latter half of the film. Her counterpart is Jules ( Julianne Moore), a hippie-ish "cool mom" who talks about ideas "rising to the plane of consciousness" and yearns to start a landscape design business. Moore's is perhaps the most difficult character arc to pull off here, but she's always been able to slip into any role, and her performance is especially touching late in the film, when she's in that amazingly painful place where you desire forgiveness but know it won't be coming anytime soon.
In a nice touch, the kids reflect the personalities of their respective mothers: Joni ( Mia Wasikowska) is a bright, Scrabble-obsessed, reserved 18-year-old who's heading off to college, while Laser ( Josh Hutcherson) seems a bit more apprehensive about his future. Hutcherson's performance is good, if occasionally a bit too understated: it's easy to see the confusion he feels about being the man of the house in a house that doesn't particularly need anyone to fill that role.
Said confusion is probably what leads Laser to ask Joni to call the sperm donation center which supplied the XY chromosomes that led to their births, in the hopes of making contact with their "father". Enter Mark Ruffalo, playing a rogue-ish, happy, late-30s bachelor who's somewhat stunned to actually realize that sperm donations sometime lead to children (this seems an echo of a similar performance he turned in The Brothers Bloom, although he's more nuanced here). Ruffalo is one of the most naturally charming actors we have working today, and he turns his high beams on here, easily impressing Joni and Laser. No one's quite sure whether he's supposed to be a friend, a father figure, or some combination thereof, leading to blurry boundaries and an uneasy threatened feeling on the part of the moms.
What happens between these characters is perhaps best left unexplored, but suffice to say mistakes are made, feelings are hurt, and things get complicated. While this is a film with a lesbian couple at its center, it's kind of a testament to Cholodenko and the script that that doesn't matter as much as it would have in the hands of someone who wanted to make a "gay film"; some gay cinema seems to focus on a character's sexuality to the exclusion of actually making them interesting, whereas here, Jules and Nic are simply people in a relationship, if one with its own unique complications.
The Kids Are All Right is a wonderfully watchable film, probably the best family dramedy I've seen since The Royal Tenenbaums, even if I felt myself appreciating it more for avoiding any major flaws rather than executing on its ideas exceedingly well. It's also funny, but in that weird way in which movies can be consistently amusing while rarely drawing outright guffaws. This isn't a film that ever upsets your expectations for it, but it doesn't seem to want to; instead, it seems pretty happy to just execute on its ideas while mixing together a puree of the best parts of late-70's cinematic family drama and mid-2000's indie cleverness. Throw in one of the best ensemble performances of the year, and the result is a film that, even though it falls short of greatness, transcends the "quirky" label it could've been tagged with in lesser hands and easily reaches "excellent".
The family at hand is parented by the un-surnamed Nic and Jules, a middle-aged lesbian couple, and their children Joni (from a Nic pregnancy) and Laser (from a Jules pregnancy). It's a family unit that might have seemed shocking had it appeared in a film 15 years ago, but the film plays it fairly straight (so to speak), focusing on each character's individual quirks instead of playing up the idea of a family headed by a lesbian couple as being especially noteworthy. Which is a strength, to be sure; this is one of the more believable screen families of recent years. Director Lisa Cholodenko goes to great lengths to downplay any notion that the arrangement is in any way odd, and as such, the first scene with the family together is almost a parody of the traditional family dinner scene. Everything is extremely pleasant, perhaps a bit too much so: it doesn't seem as though anything wrong will ever happen to these people.
The family dynamic is made clear early on: Nic ( Annette Bening) is the family breadwinner, a Type A doctor who hits the wine perhaps a bit too often. Bening has perhaps the least favorable role to play in the film, as Nic seems to be the least fun member of the entire family; she's a bit too brittle and straight-laced to be very fun to watch, as if we were watching home videos of Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, this all makes it difficult to sympathize with her during the drama of the latter half of the film. Her counterpart is Jules ( Julianne Moore), a hippie-ish "cool mom" who talks about ideas "rising to the plane of consciousness" and yearns to start a landscape design business. Moore's is perhaps the most difficult character arc to pull off here, but she's always been able to slip into any role, and her performance is especially touching late in the film, when she's in that amazingly painful place where you desire forgiveness but know it won't be coming anytime soon.
In a nice touch, the kids reflect the personalities of their respective mothers: Joni ( Mia Wasikowska) is a bright, Scrabble-obsessed, reserved 18-year-old who's heading off to college, while Laser ( Josh Hutcherson) seems a bit more apprehensive about his future. Hutcherson's performance is good, if occasionally a bit too understated: it's easy to see the confusion he feels about being the man of the house in a house that doesn't particularly need anyone to fill that role.
What happens between these characters is perhaps best left unexplored, but suffice to say mistakes are made, feelings are hurt, and things get complicated. While this is a film with a lesbian couple at its center, it's kind of a testament to Cholodenko and the script that that doesn't matter as much as it would have in the hands of someone who wanted to make a "gay film"; some gay cinema seems to focus on a character's sexuality to the exclusion of actually making them interesting, whereas here, Jules and Nic are simply people in a relationship, if one with its own unique complications.
The Kids Are All Right is a wonderfully watchable film, probably the best family dramedy I've seen since The Royal Tenenbaums, even if I felt myself appreciating it more for avoiding any major flaws rather than executing on its ideas exceedingly well. It's also funny, but in that weird way in which movies can be consistently amusing while rarely drawing outright guffaws. This isn't a film that ever upsets your expectations for it, but it doesn't seem to want to; instead, it seems pretty happy to just execute on its ideas while mixing together a puree of the best parts of late-70's cinematic family drama and mid-2000's indie cleverness. Throw in one of the best ensemble performances of the year, and the result is a film that, even though it falls short of greatness, transcends the "quirky" label it could've been tagged with in lesser hands and easily reaches "excellent".
