DVD REVIEW: The Kids Are All Right (2010)

FAMILY VALUES

Good comedy isn't about loud gags, but about watching everyday life keenly and catching the moments that tickle, almost always, imperceptibly. Like Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right. It's perhaps the most intelligent comedy to come out of Hollywood in ages. It's also sensitive, poignant, crazy and intuitive in its understanding of people, love and relationships. But for me, it's most refreshing quality is it's unabashedly candid take on sex and sexuality. Not just because it has a lesbian couple at the centre, but because of its unusual sensibility towards the act of love-making -- neither squeamish, nor titillating -- a matter-of-fact depiction of two people doing things to and with each other's bodies totally unmindful of the camera and the audience that's watching them.

Cholodenko is entirely unselfconscious in her approach to filmmaking. Which in turn, makes her film psychologically astutue and honest. Simply because she's telling it like she wants to. I suppose that's the joy of independent filmmaking, and of being a woman filmmaker (nobody expects to put big money on them, thereby taking the burden of expectations and market forces out of the picture). But the real hook of Cholodenko's film is the brilliant screenplay (co-written with Stuart Blumberg) and the manner in which it uses two of Hollywood's sharpest, most inuitive actresses to its advantage.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have been married for several years -- long enough to have taken a toll on each other and the relationship, and yet, to derive the comfort of a warm sweater from the bondage. Nic is a doctor and primary breadwinner, Jules is still unsure about her career and after dabbling in various professions has now decided to become a landscape architect. She's probably drifted around on the back of Nic's stable career and been 'homemaker' in this family with two children born to either mother of an unknown sperm donor.

Now, the kids have grown up -- Joni (Mia Wasikowska) is 18 and Laser (Josh Hutcherson) is 15 -- and are curious to meet their biological father. Turns out he's a bohemian organic farmer who owns a mean bike and is stoically commitment-phobic and casually philandering. Mark Ruffalo fits the picture to a T. He's also easy to like in a semi-hippie, 'i don't care much about anything' way -- the kind who went around donating his sperm for 60 bucks a shot back then. And so Joni and Laser warm up to him -- dealing with him seems a lot easier than coping with the moms. Jules too falls for his charm, either out of boredom or mid-life crisis, while Nic, the stable one, worries about his growing shadow over her family.

You'd think Paul (Ruffalo) is Cholodenko's villain. He certainly is Nic's. But the director isn't interested in playing god. She likes the people she's painted, tics and all. She's just picked them up at a particular point in their lives and tracked the minor turbulence that hits them for a while in the most non-judgmental manner possible. Here's a regular family, with regular issues -- a jaded marriage, confused, difficult kids, and little misgivings off-set by deep-rooted love. Jules' disappointment with Nic, the latter's desperation to hold things together, Laser's longing for a father-figure, Joni's determination to set off on her own independent life, are all elements straight out of everyday suburban life, anywhere in the world.

What makes them special is the humanity with which Cholodenko handles their interaction, giving each of them a distinct personality and enough character to make us want to care about them. Bening, in particular, is pitch-perfect in her portrayal of a middle-aged, control-freakish, mildly alcoholic doctor who has made this family the focus of her life and doesn't quite know what to do when she watches them slipping away. The ever-dependable Moore and Ruffalo strike a fantastic working chemistry which works to the film's advantage. And as for the kids, they're more than all right.