I try to shy away from too much autobiography in my movie reviews. You guys aren’t here to read my journal, you’re here to read about awesome movies. Normally, if I write about what’s going on in my life it’s because it directly effects the way I watch movies, i.e. traveling to Thailand or throwing a 12-hour-long movie party at my house. I feel, however, that I can’t write about Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right without drudging up some personal dirt.
Unlike Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Lasar (Josh Hutcherson), the teenage instigators of this drama, I did not grow up with lesbian moms. I’ve never dealt with the anxiety involved in searching for my sperm donor father. Unlike these kids’ moms, Nic (Annette Benning) and Jules (Julianne Moore), I have never been pressured to prove my nontraditional family’s worth. Thank god, I have never had to face the wilting of a decades-long romance. It is a testament to Cholodenko's work that despite the dissimilarities between my life and the unique, specific situation presented in The Kids Are All Right, this movie honestly, lucidly captures many familiar experiences from my family life and teenage years, some that I didn't even remember, and none that I've seen portrayed on film with any modicum of sincerity.
My parent’s relationship was rocky at best. It was obvious to everyone around that they probably should have divorced long, long before they actually did. Whatever kept them together for 23 years is a mystery, probably just as much to them as anyone else. When they finally separated for good, I was 19 years old. My little brothers were 16.
In the years following that separation, I’ve been first-hand witness to ‘adults’ playing out their own mistakes, insecurities, and shortcomings in the lives of their children. Like Joni and Lasar, I’ve had my affections and unconditional love manipulated against me. I’ve been made to pick favorites. I’ve lashed out by getting pissed drunk. I’ve been forced to face my parents’ flawed conception of love, lust, and sexuality. My siblings and I have been forced to look out for ourselves and each other while the older generation attends to their petty melodramas. Most insultingly, I’ve been expected to form and define my own adult life out of the wreckage of my parents’. Divorce is a bad way to start college.
Now I understand that I'm not the only one with experiences like this, and that furthermore it could have been much worse - I could have grown up starving, impoverished, or in a physically abusive situation. There is, however, a very specific anxiety that comes with the dissolution of the contemporary nuclear family, one that Cholodenko taps into masterfully, vividly weaving our combined cultural memory into this beautiful mess of a story. In Nic, I see my dad attempting to be the rational ‘leader of the family,’ even when his own drunken trespasses negate his authority. In Jules, I see my mom’s infuriating flightiness and confusion, yet also her unconditional love for her children for her family. In Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the children’s sperm donor, I see my dad’s midlife crisis, his desire to be the ‘cool dad’ without having to sacrifice any of his own pleasures for his family. When the cards are all on the table, I see my dad in Paul’s weaselly attempts to use Joni and Laser’s obvious affection to make himself feel better about himself. Yet in Paul, I also get to experience my dad’s charm and just how much damn fun he can be all over again. He sings along to Joni Mitchell with Nic at the dinner table. He goes skateboarding with Laser, and encourages Joni to travel the world.
I love these characters. When they screw up and hurt themselves and each other, I want them to be better than they are. These people are more realistic and developed than many acquaintances of mine. Before throwing their lives into turmoil, Cholodenko, her co-writer Stuart Blumberg, and the actors make this family one you wish you were a part of. Salads from fancy Ikea bowels. Saturday afternoon barbecues. Stupid in-jokes developed over years and years. These guys actually act like they had lived together for twenty years, something I’ve seen rarely enough in real life let alone the movies. It’s pretty stereotypically upper middle class, but it kind of reminded me of why people choose that lifestyle in the first place. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to grow old and raise a family.
This probably makes The Kids Are All Right sound like 2 hours in mope city, but it’s not true. This movie does not behave like other suburban melodramas, a genre I typically can’t stand. The Kids Are All Right is incredibly funny, entertaining, heartwarming, and just plain enjoyable, too. The drama doesn’t come from some outlandish scenario. The ‘two moms’ conceit is never the source of chaos. The catalyst, Joni and Lasar’s search for their ‘real’ dad, is something that happens so often around us that in the movie it comes and goes without us even realizing it was the catalyst. The comedy is the same. These aren’t stand up comedians shoehorned into a feel-good movie. They tell the kind of dumb jokes any of us would tell once we let our guard down around family or close friends.
Where many movies like this drown under the weight of 'indie film self-importance,' The Kids Are All Right is effortlessly natural, honest, and real. You will be hard pressed to find a better movie in 2010.
-Ben