REVIEW: The Kids Are All Right

I thought I was going to love this new film from Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon) and I was quite excited to see it. Even though I was sick of the trailer that had been shown at almost every movie I attended since April, it still seemed as though the cast, combined with the director, would be a no-brainer for me.

I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy most of The Kids Are All Right, but I had such a fundamentally strong reaction to a major plot element that I found it difficult to snap back into the story. That said, I’ve been having difficulty with my reaction because most other people don’t seem to have a problem with it.

Our story centers around a perfectly normal American family: they laugh, they cry, they fight, they love. The fact that the parents are two lesbians is not even an issue in the perfect little bubble of a world that they inhabit. Their two children (a 15-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter) were conceived with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, but when the kids reach out to him to learn more about “their father”, it sets off a perfect storm of emotional angst.

My issues with the film involve a SPOILER WARNING (although Ebert discusses the plot point in his review and the trailer hints at it), so skip the rest of this if you don’t want to know…

Where the movie goes off the rails for me is when Julianne Moore’s character (one half of our lesbian couple) begins to have an affair with the Mark Ruffalo character (the sperm donor). She doesn’t feel appreciated by her wife (played by Annette Bening) and she gets caught up in the mystery of this man with whom she shares an odd bond. It doesn’t happen once, or twice, but multiple times. And yes, it tears the family up and causes great harm…but why an affair with a man?

My problem with this storyline is not that it couldn’t happen. People have affairs all the time and human sexuality is complicated and more fluid for some than it is for others. I just really didn’t like the way it was presented (and there was no indication leading up to these moments that Moore’s character had ever been with a man before). It is sold in SUCH a stereotypical way which buys in to the way that right wing people think that being gay is a choice. That a woman in an EIGHTEEN YEAR LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP just needs a nice guy with a big cock to turn her around and straighten her out. Yes, she actually gasps when she unzips his pants for the first time!

I know that this movie was directed by a lesbian who has had children from a sperm donor (and she co-wrote it with a guy who donated sperm when he was in college, so they both had genuine life experiences to work from) and I feel like I shouldn’t be so bent out of shape about this, but I was.

It’s also worth nothing that there are 2 fairly explicit straight sex scenes in the film, while the lesbian sex takes place under more covers than they have in stock at your average Bed, Bath and Beyond.

The performances in this movie are terrific, but didn’t lessen the impact of the affair storyline to me. Annette Bening will get nominated for every award and I thought she was amazing. Both of the kids are quite good and Mark Ruffalo makes you like him despite his faults. I thought Julianne Moore was ok, but honestly seemed like she was giving the same performance that she’d done countless times before (and did anybody else notice how a Boston accent creeped in a few times? maybe this was shot near her “30 Rock” guest spots).

Ultimately, I wanted and expected so much more from this film, but I seem to be one of the few dissenters.

Screened digitally at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (sneak preview) on July 14th, 2010. Released by Focus Features.

1. butchfagswagger said: I haven’t seen it yet, and I don’t plan to. bullybloggers.wordpress…
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