The Kids Are All Right

I don't like Julianne Moore or Annette Bening. Not as people, of course, but as actresses. While they are two of the better-known actresses over the age of 40 these days, I find them both to be extremely mannered on screen. To put it simply, when I watch them, I can see them acting. There are exceptions, of course--I love, love, LOVE Far From Heaven--but for the most part, these two are like nails on a chalkboard. So put them together as a lesbian couple with two teenage kids, as the main characters of their own movie, and you can imagine how excited I am. But, as I referenced in my previous post, the film of which I speak, The Kids Are All Right, is getting rave reviews, has done well at the box office, and will likely be a contender for Best Picture at next year's Oscars. I rarely avoid Oscar-bait movies, even if I'm not excited, so it was with trepidation that I saw the film last night.

While I was relatively lukewarm on the overall movie--mainly thanks to the funny but weak script by director Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg--I'll say that, with no reservations, Bening and Moore were both excellent. They played characters who I'm pretty sure I wouldn't ever want to spend time with, but they were great. The entire cast of the film--specifically Bening, Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hutcherson, and Mia Wasikowska--is great, but they are woefully underserved by the script. The plot of the film is high-concept, very 21st century, and also nothing more than a high concept: Bening and Moore play Nic and Jules, a married couple with two kids, Joni and Laser. Laser wants to know about the man whose sperm was used to conceive both kids, so Joni, who's older, gets in contact with him. Paul, a charming, rumpled restaurant owner, is the man in question, immediately charms his way into the family and ruffles Nic's feathers in the process.

I don't have a problem with a slight plot; what I have a problem with is how poorly developed each character is. Nic is a doctor, but she's mostly identified by being dominant in her relationships to the point of nearly coming off as a monster in some scenes. Jules is a flighty person, flitting from job to job; now, she's starting a landscape design company but even that may fall through. Paul owns a restaurant and likes to talk about himself. Again, one-dimensional characters aren't uncommon to Hollywood movies (and make no mistake, indie cred or not, this is a Hollywood movie through and through), but it's hard for me to buy some of the decisions the characters make with bare-minimum backstories.

Still, mostly thanks to some well-timed humor throughout and the sheer charm oozing from the five leads, The Kids Are All Right nearly manages to gloss over its flaws. Ruffalo has always seemed like something of a troublemaker in the movies he stars in--a notable exception is his performance in the superb Zodiac--and the role of Paul provides him plenty of room to make mayhem; it's subtle, but he's wreaking havoc with each move he makes in this family. Moore does a better job than expected as Jules, someone who's known better for being pretty than for being smart and has just realized it. Bening is also remarkable, but not surprising, as such a hard and harsh mother. Wasikowska and Hutcherson are both very good, but they lose out most of the five characters, having been given subplots that go nowhere. Joni, we are told by her friend, likes a certain boy, but that doesn't even get out of the gate; Laser's saddled with a friend who's a jerk (and wants to urinate on dogs, which is just charming), and his parents thinking he's gay. Wasikowska and Hutcherson do a great job acting like siblings, but they've got far too little to do.

There's no question that The Kids Are All Right is a movie that's worth watching; whether it's worth you paying money in the theater is up for debate. If you're turned off by gay people--well, get over it, please, it's the 21st century; having said that, this movie is barely about gay marriage and never flaunts Nic and Jules as a standard for being the right way to have a gay marriage work. The Kids Are All Right isn't as good as some people think it is, but it's also not as bad as I'd thought it would be. Movies don't often exceed our expectations, so it's nice that it happens once in a while.