The Kids Are All Right (Friday, July 16, 2010) (76)

The story of Kids Are All Right is so precious it's hard to write about without my heart and ovaries exploding into a million pieces (joking). Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are a married lesbian couple in Los Angeles who have two teenage kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Each kid came from one one of the women being artificially inseminated in a clinic. Now that Joni is 18 and is about to move off to college, Laser wants her to get in touch with the sperm donor "father" so they can all meet.


Paul (Mark Ruffalo) is that donor and he's a now a highly sexed organic farmer and restaurateur in LA. His life has never totally become serious as he sleeps with whatever hot women is currently hanging around his businesses. When he's contacted by his offspring, he falls in love with the idea of being part of a family and immediately becomes a fixture in the lives of his kids. He hires Jules, who is trying to get a landscape business off the ground, to re-do his back yard. All of this does not sit well with Nic, who is only happy when she's in control.


To say the script is banal or unoriginal would be a huge understatement. We expect each plot turn almost exactly where it occurs and there is basically nothing more fresh to the story at all. More frustrating is the sloppiness of the writing and the reliance on over-written or nonsensical details to advance the plot (like how Paul is contacted by the sperm bank on his cell phone rather than in writing, which is good for the screen, but unrealistic - how did they get his cell number? Or how Nic and Jules are overprotective parents who say they shop at Whole Foods, but somehow don't know about organic foods).


(By the way, Laser is not a name. Laser is an acronym. Lazar is a Jewish name - like Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof - but Laser is dumb. I'm going to name my kid Nato... or Scuba... or Fifa.)

This is basically a super-trite Hollywood film wearing a button-up shirt and tie. I guess I'm supposed to be impressed that the normal family drama plays out over a "non-traditional" marriage, but I really don't care. There's nothing especially political about the film - to the contrary, Nic and Jules take on rather traditional masculine/feminine roles with Nic being the dominant provider and Jules being the submissive nurturer.


The acting between the mothers is good (actually its very good) - and also between the kids and their father - but I never really saw much of a motherly connection between the kids and their moms. Now that I think about it, there are not all that many scenes with the kids and the moms - most of the scenes are just between the moms, just between the kids or just between Paul and other characters. It's hard to make a movie about a family when the family is never in the same room together. The film is not really about the kids (as the title would suggest), but also not really about the parents either. It's sorta about family in that stuff happens in a family and people have to do stuff - but it's not really that interesting.


I think I mostly mind that the film rather comes from nowhere and goes nowhere - but makes us think that there's growth and development. Nic seems to be a cold bitch (I say that as an objective analysis and not to be misogynistic) who is basically never honestly happy. She never accepts Paul because she is threatened by him - but also because she has a dead heart. When he actually does something worthy of scorn, she continues to hate him - but for the wrong reasons and not totally fairly. She was never going to like him, so that he did actually mess up doesn't make her right to continue to not like him.


On top of this, the mothers are overbearing and that their kids respond, well, like kids, has nothing to do with the inception of Paul as a catalyst in their lives - it has to do with them growing up and seeing their mothers for what they are. Paul is basically totally unnecessary to this story as all the things that happen could have happened without him being around.


I object to repackaging a story I've seen a million times as something fresh and new - and **gay**. Give me something I've never seen before or give me something more traditional and interesting. I've seen this shit before and it didn't excite me the first time.


Stars: 1 of 4