July 11, 2010

MOVIES: The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)

The critical buzz has been overwhelming on this one ever since Sundance. Unfortunately, I didn't think the movie came anywhere near living up to the hype.

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening star as a couple whose lives are thrown into turmoil when their teenaged kids locate their sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo). Moore and Bening aren't remotely convincing as a longterm couple, in part because they refuse to communicate with one another. Instead, they spout treacly new age psychobabble that sounds like communication, but really amounts to nothing more than passive-aggressive hostility. (Typical conversation: "That's not how I feel!" "Of course it is. Maybe those feelings just haven't risen to the level of consciousness yet.")

As for Ruffalo, he's playing the character he always plays -- the lovably irresponsible, irresistibly charming rascal -- and we're not given a new character so much as a greatest hits reel. It's a performance that Ruffalo could give in his sleep, and it often feels as if he did; it's shamefully lazy.

Josh Hutcherson and Mia Wasikowska play the kids, and they give the movie's only good performances. Wasikowska is particularly good as the daughter who uses her father's presence as the opportunity for her first real acts of rebellion against her mothers.

There's an interesting story wanting to be told here, but it gets lost in Cholodenko's smirking contempt for her characters. The biggest disappointment of the year.

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