The Kids are All Right

The beautiful thing about Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids are All Right is that even though there is a lesbian relationship at the center of it, the film does not draw attention to it. It doesn't treat the two women who act as the parents, or the kids (who they each gave birth to separately through artificial insemination), any different from any other family. If the movie were about a traditional family unit, it'd probably be getting a wide release, and be hailed by audiences as one of the funniest and most honest films about families in a while, which the movie is.

The couple at the head of the family are Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore). They're deeply in love, and love their two teenage kids, Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and Joni (Mia Wasikowska). They're generally happy, despite some problems. Nic is a doctor, very career-minded and focused, while Jules is content to kind of breeze through life. She's had a lot of failed jobs in the past, but thinks she's found her calling by starting her own landscape gardening business. As for the kids, Joni has the image of being the daughter any parent would want. Straight A's, going to a good college next month...Laser has a few more problems. He's been hanging out with the wrong crowd, which his mothers misinterpret as something completely different, which I will not reveal, less I ruin a very funny moment in the film. The kids have long since come to accept their alternative homelife, but Laser has been wondering a lot lately who the anonymous sperm donor was that helped give birth to both him and his sister.

He convinces Joni to seek out their birth father, much to the shock of Nic and Jules, who pretend to be okay with the idea, but are secretly petrified. The man that the kids track down is Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a laid back guy who runs an organic food business, rides a motorcycle, and is one of those people who never settled down. He likes to be free to have sex and flirt with any women he chooses from his staff. When the kids find him, he's obviously nervous, but generally cool about it. They invite him to their home to meet their mothers, and Jules is the first one who opens up with him. That's why he offers her first landscaping job, doing work on his backyard. One thing leads to another, and before they know it, Paul and Jules are sneaking off to have sex whenever she comes over to work. This obviously divides not just the parents, but the kids as well, as they are forced to take sides.

The movie is smart not to dip into generic melodrama once this happens. The Kids are All Right keeps a fairly light tone, never loses its sense of humor, but also has a lot of truths to say about relationships. Yes, we've heard it before in other movies, but the screenplay by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg is so smart and witty, we don't care. This is one of those movies where I loved listening to the characters talk. The scene where Paul comes over for dinner the first time just sounds so natural. Close your eyes during this scene and just listen to the characters talk, and you'd swear you were listening to a real conversation. It doesn't sound scripted in the slightest. The movie treats everyone as real people. The alternative lifestyle is never really brought up, which makes sense, since the kids have been living with it all their lives. It never really becomes a plot point, or a focus. This movie is interested in who these people are, not that two of them just happen to be lesbians.

The wonderful performances really bring this aspect out. This is easily the best-acted movie I've seen so far this year. Bening and Moore, both great actresses, create a casual but kind of strained relationship that really convinces you they've been together for some 20 years. They obviously love each other, but they are bothered by certain things. Bening's Nic wishes that her partner would buckle down and take things more seriously, while Jules wishes that Nic would pay more attention to her, rather than work. It's something almost all families deal with at one point, and this movie handles it in a mature manner. Mark Ruffalo gives off an easy, laid back charm which suits the character perfectly. He doesn't mean for what eventually happens to actually happen. He's just not used to a stable and settled down life. As for the kids, Josh Hutcherson has long been one of the more talented young actors, and he proves it once again here. And Mia Wasikowska (fresh off her star turn in Alice in Wonderland) gives another stand out performance. I look forward to seeing her career rise.

This is a wonderful film, full of humor and characters we can honestly care about. It's one of 2010's very best, and I hope it does not go undiscovered. This is not a "gay" movie. It's a movie about topics that anyone in any kind of situation could probably identify or associate with. It's also hilariously funny, sweet, and wonderfully thought out. Don't let this movie pass you by. It's a treasure.

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