'The Kids Are All Right' Is A Step Above The Rest

            The best kind of Saturday, in my opinion, is one filled with movies.  I decided to take a recovery day from my hell-week and Saturday morning, lazing out of bed at noon, felt an inexplicable urge to crawl right back under the covers with a good movie.  My choices were endless (thanks for the Netflix password, Dad!).  Should I go classic and watch something like Antonioni’s Blow-Up, a film I had just spent the last two weeks discussing in Italian class.  Or should I finally get around to watching The Kids Are All Right, which for some reason I just haven’t worked up the will to watch since it was released to much critical acclaim this summer.

            I picked the latter of the two and god am I pleased I did.  The film stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, some of Hollywood’s most prestigious actresses, in a dramedy about an unconventional family living in what looks to be California.  Usually I find myself distracted while watching movies on my laptop, but not once during The Kids Are All Right did I minimize the video window.  Director Lisa Cholodenko has crafted a masterpiece.

            The film follows lesbian couple Nic (Bening) and Jules (Moore) and their two children Joni (Alice in Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson) as they go about their daily lives.  One day, Laser decides that he wants to make contact with his and Joni’s biological father Paul, a sperm donor played with unceasing charm and heart by Mark Ruffalo.  Paul quickly becomes a part of the family’s life, sharing dinners with them, taking Laser and his friend to shoot hoops, and hiring Jules as a landscape designer for his backyard.  Things quickly take a thrilling and original turn for the unexpected when Paul and Jules begin to have an affair, one that tears at strings holding everyone together.

              NY Times film critic A.O. Scott said it best when he commented, “precedents and grounds for comparison seem to be lacking…” concerning the marvelously refreshing Kids.  The most fascinating thing about it is its unflinching premise that gay marriage is a perfectly accepted facet of American life.  Rife with surprisingly blasé quotes like “My moms said so,” the film never even addresses the quirkiness of the group.  From there, Bening and Moore deliver some of the finest work of their career.  Certainly her best work since American Beauty, Bening turns in a heart wrenching yet sassy performance as Nic, the “pants-wearer” of the family.  Bening’s Nic is a no-nonsense straight shooter, which makes it all the more powerful when she breaks down and weeps.  A truly shocking character collapse, it hits the audience just as hard as it does Nic.  Moore masterfully blends the role of the more easygoing parent with that of a tortured adulteress, walking a thin line between sympathetic and despicable perfectly.  The two mesh wonderfully together, what with the couldn’t-be-better mix of Moore’s impeccable comedic timing and Bening’s icy stares yet lovable embraces.  They are sassy but sensitive, funny but emotional.  Quite frankly, they are the most engaging couple to grace the screen this year.

I couldn’t help but to find myself falling for Jules as passionately as Ruffalo’s startlingly nuanced Paul.  Possibly his best work to date, Ruffalo layers his affable new-dad role with a deeply rooted passion for his children and both of their mothers.  His chemistry with Moore is a one-sided but moving one, as she fully realizes just how wrong their relationship is.  It is pain staking to see how quickly and deeply Paul finds himself head over heels in love with a committed lesbian, a true testament to Ruffalo’s impeccable acting.  His crooked smile and outlandish allure woo Laser and Joni and win our hearts.

I also must reserve praise for the actors portraying Jules and Nic’s children.  Wasikowska does a complete 360 from her Alice days, a movie in which she moped and harrumphed her way through “Underland.”  In Kids, Joni is the perfect teenager searching for something more.  She is headed to the college her moms wanted her to go to, but when she meets Paul, she finds a sort of freedom.  Wasikowska’s eventual defiance and plucky demeanor plays perfectly with Hutcherson’s excellent prepubescent Laser.  The wondrous amazement with which he looks upon a friend’s interactions with his own father ignites the entire plot.  Hutcherson is quite the talented actor, bringing a fresh spin on the “rebellious teenage boy” role that has been beaten to death in film.  Instead, Laser is a sympathetic but resilient teen who, under Hutcherson’s watchful eye, matures precisely as much as one should in the course of a film.

Under Cholodenko’s sharp direction, The Kids Are All Right rises above other “quirky indie family” movies of recent (like Little Miss Sunshine) and finds a place among the classics, if not a step above them.