Despite the organic trimmings, The Kids Are All Right is the same meal that we’ve been served up again and again in the movies. It’s good, the ingredients all work, but it’s nothing that you’d want to pay over the odds for.
Annette Bening plays Nic and Julianne Moore plays Jules, together they are a happy lesbian couple with two children they love very much (a daughter named Joni, played by Mia Wasikowska and a son named Laser, played by Josh Hutcherson). The children were brought about by the use of donated sperm and things change for the family when the kids decide to meet up with the sperm donor (Paul, played by Mark Ruffalo) and Nic and Jules find themselves losing control over what they always had a firm grip on.
Director Lisa Cholodenko (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Stuart Blumberg) creates something here that’s both all-too-familiar and yet also a little bit fresher than usual, largely thanks to the central same-sex relationship between Bening and Moore and how the movie handles this in pretty much the same way as any standard relationship flick. One or two plot moments aside, the film could just as easily have been made with a male-female couple in the middle of things and that’s a testament to how well the movie deals with all of the characters involved and doesn’t get hung up on the sexuality of it’s leads.
This is a movie in which nobody is perfect but nobody is deliberately set up to be a baddie either. Despite the many “movie moments” it manages, somehow, to feel quite natural and real in many places, most obviously in the depiction of the relationship between Moore and Bening but also in the way that Ruffalo tries to get to know the children he never knew he had.. The characters are memorable and yet, impressively, not loaded with quirks in an attempt to come over as hip and fresh. No, these characters make an impression thanks to a good script married to great performances.
Bening and Moore are absolutely believable, Ruffalo is as good as ever and even the youngsters do a great job onscreen beside such talented stars, holding their own admirably without crying out for attention.
Chodolenko keeps things moving nicely, with a nice mix of humour and drama, and draws the viewer to a point where you start to care about all of those involved as things become more emotional for all parties.
The Kids Are All Right isn’t really anything special, it’s not something I may rush to watch again but it IS very good and a little movie that I’m happy to have taken a chance on with a blind buy.
DIRECTOR: LISA CHOLODENKO
STARS: JULIANNE MOORE, ANNETTE BENING, MARK RUFFALO, MIA WASIKOWSKA, JOSH HUTCHERSON
RUNTIME: 106 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: USA
Film Rating: 
