Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again because it’s my keyboard and I’m an American and I can type whatever I want. I assign no value to arbitrarily assigned awards by corrupt committees. I know the Academy Awards is a big deal to an awful lot of people, and I’m not just talking people who in the movie business, but just regular folks like you and me who take this actress or that actor or this movie or that effects supervisor getting an award or getting snubbed for an award very, very seriously. But who in the world determines this nonsense? Now if for some bizarre reason I got invited to one these corrupt award shows I would most certainly go because I do own a tuxedo, I look damn good in this tuxedo and I love me an after party with an open bar. I only bring this up again because I’ve just seen this movie ‘The Kid’s are All Right’, a wacky little sex comedy in which Ms. Annette Bening was nominated for one of these awards, but poor Julianne Moore got left out in the cold and she was killing me in this movie. Again, who decides these things? The BCS makes more sense by comparison.

Moving along, most are familiar with the story of ‘The Kid’s are all right’ in that it centers around a married lesbian couple in Nic (Bening) and Jules (Moore) who have been married for a long time and are going through a lot of the stuff that people who have been married a long time are going through. The couple has a couple of kids in eighteen year old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and fifteen year old Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Hell if I know why they named this kid Laser.

Laser has decided he needs to know who the sperm donor was that helped sire he and his sister and after some convincing, Joni does the necessary footwork to find out this information. This leads the kids to Paul (Mark Ruffalo), an earthy, free living, organic food type hipsters who looks like he’s having a pretty good life right about now. Seriously, this cat calls up a completely beautiful woman late at night, she comes over, they have immoral relations and then of her own accord she grabs her stuff and leaves and he didn’t have to pay her a dime. I don’t think life can get much better than that.

Anyway, Paul is intrigued by these kids he had a hand in creating, they meet, and they all get along. The mothers didn’t know about this and not surprisingly when they found out they were a little hurt about the kids going behind their back but then they meet Paul and see that he’s not so bad. Except for Nic who hates him from the word go.

What Paul’s intrusion into this family’s life has mainly done is bring all of the insecurities roaring to the surface. Nic like to be in control, which she feels Paul is taking away from. Jules feels as if her mate doesn’t see her or respect her anymore where Paul sees her very, very well. Joni finds that Paul gives her a certain amount of freedom that her mothers are reluctant to give and Laser could probably just care less. He’s a boy in a house full of conflicted women so it’s probably better this way. Regardless, I’m pretty sure it will all work out in the end. Except for that asshole of a man. It’s not going to work out for him at all. Asshole.

One of the disappointing things about this movie for me was a scene where Laser were getting an explanation from his mothers about why they watch male gay porn, an explanation Jules was providing until Nic rudely cuts her off. I’m sorry but I needed to know this. Director Lisa Cholodenko and her team of filmmakers sprung these horrific images of men humping each other on me so I think I deserve some kind explanation. What had caused this impromptu meeting was the mothers finding Laser watching their gay porn in his bedroom with his best friend, thus leading them to think he might be gay. Gee, why would they think that?

Since some corrupt committee consisting of shadowy members deemed this movie award worthy, I figured I should set aside the usual stuff I watch, say something like ‘Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus’ and watch this instead. What I got for my trouble was a movie that was entertaining, highlighted by some fantastic performances from some very good actors, but I also got a movie that was wholly predictable, completely unrealistic on any level of reality that I’m familiar with and heavy handed in theme while at the same time light in substance. The only thing that’s really different about this movie, say in comparison to any other adult oriented comedy / relationship / drama about a married couple having the same tired over-dramatized problems is that the main couple are lesbians. That’s it. And to be honest there is really no drama that comes out of our main couple being gay. That could be the point of the whole thing, displaying that we’ve come this far as a society where a gay couple can exist and everybody is cool with it, from the kids to the kids friends to the strangers they meet on the street. Everybody is cool with it. We know that this isn’t even close to true, but I’ll buy into it for the sake of this movie.

This movie whisks along, hitting every plot point as if on cue before coming to its inevitable conclusion but it does do this blatant forecasting very effectively, at a very high level and is entertaining in the process. Not that I care about this because it’s all corrupt but I would still like to know what Julianne Moore did not to get anointed by the rotten committee for one of these worthless awards.