The kids might be ‘All Right’
– but adults have issues in indie film directed by Lisa
Cholodenko
I had high expectations for
”
The Kids Are All Right.
”
It performed well at the Sundance Film Festival and had been
getting some critical acclaim. It opened in early July in limited
release, but started playing in Morgan Hill last weekend.
The kids might be ‘All Right’ – but adults have issues in indie film directed by Lisa Cholodenko
I had high expectations for “The Kids Are All Right.” It performed well at the Sundance Film Festival and had been getting some critical acclaim. It opened in early July in limited release, but started playing in Morgan Hill last weekend.
The movie catches a family of four in transition. Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have been a happy couple for many years. They are close with their two children Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). But things change as Joni prepares to leave for college and the two children decide to make contact with their biological father Paul (Mark Ruffalo). The two were conceived using a sperm donor – they share the same father, though Joni is biologically related to Nic and Laser to Jules.
In the production notes, screenwriters Stuart Blumberg and Lisa Cholodenko talked about their choice to work together on the movie. Cholodenko was in the process of trying to get pregnant and had been seeing news articles about the first wave of children to be conceived using a sperm donor coming of age. Blumberg himself had been a sperm donor in college.
The two come from different backgrounds, Blumberg with credits for mainstream comedies such as “Keeping the Faith,” and Cholodenko, with such indie films as “High Art” and “Laurel Canyon.” But they decided to work together to create something they felt would be a melding of the two worlds. They wrote a first draft and then continued to rewrite as Cholodenko got pregnant and spent a few years raising her son. Cholodenko directed the film.
Though the film centers around a lesbian couple, the writers say it was not their intention to send a message.
“I think when Lisa and I started writing ‘The Kids Are All Right,’ we were saying, ‘This is something that happens and let’s explore the story that comes out of that,’ We focused on human beings, not on issues.”
Nic and Jules are definitely people who have some issues, however. Nic is a doctor, a perfectionist and the breadwinner of the family. Jules wants to start a new business, though it’s clear she doesn’t have a good track record of following through with her schemes. She has spent most of her time as a stay-at-home mom. Joni is trying to find a balance between doing what she wants to do and pleasing her mother Nic. Laser is struggling to find a masculine role model in his life.
At the beginning of the movie, Joni has just turned 18 and graduated from high school. Laser approaches her to call the sperm bank to see if their father will agree to meet them, and suddenly Paul comes into their lives.
Paul owns a restaurant where he serves organic vegetables from his own garden. His life is a sharp contrast to the family life of the other four. He rides a fast motorcycle, sleeps with the hostess of his restaurant and drinks lot of red wine.
When he gets the call from the sperm bank that he has a daughter who would like to contact him, he agrees to it without really thinking about it. Soon Joni and Laser arrange to meet their “bio-dad” for lunch at his restaurant. Joni is at first reluctant to meet their dad because she is worried it will hurt “momses” feelings, the term she uses to refer to her parents collectively. Laser is anxious to meet him.
But at the meeting, Joni seems to hit it off and Laser is a bit put off by what he sees as their dad being kind of full of himself.
The acting in the movie is well done. Bening is grating as the uptight Nic, who nitpicks at her kids and drinks too much. Moore plays Jules as somewhat of an airhead and a doormat. She is extremely sensitive to what she sees as sleights from Nic. Ruffalo is good at playing a chill, laid back kind of guy. Whether it is Ruffalo’s acting or the screenplay, it isn’t very convincing when Paul decides he wants to settle down and have a family. His motives for getting involved with his children are never very clear.
The one reason the movie didn’t work for me was that I didn’t buy Paul and Jules relationship. There is one line in the movie where Jules says something about human desire being a spectrum when the moms are talking to Laser, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when she started getting involved with Paul, which causes the major conflict in the movie. The filmmakers were trying to make a point that the sexual orientation of the characters wasn’t integral to the story, but it frustrated me that Jules has an affair and it is not with another woman.
With such strong leads in the adult roles, lesser actors in the roles of the teens may have been overwhelmed. But Wasikowska, who played Alice in “Alice in Wonderland,” and Hutcherson, who had the lead in the tear jerker “Bridge to Terabithia,” both seemed comfortable in their roles. They are both a little introverted, but as the title implies they are pretty well adjusted kids when it comes down to it.
Melissa Flores can be reached at
mf*****@pi**********.com
. She writes a blog at http://melissa-movielines.blogspot.com.
