Reel Reflections

“The Kids Are All Right”

Celebrating Family Ties that Bind—and Gag

Dave Greiser

I never thought I’d say it, but I’m becoming a sucker for family movies. If I’m not careful, I may be required to turn in my membership card in the Curmudgeon’s Club.

Not that the families whose movies I’m enjoying are normal—but then, what family is normal? “Juno” was the tale of a sharp-tongued high school student whose pregnancy forced her to grow up. “Little Miss Sunshine” tracked an extended family across America as they entered the youngest family member in a bizarre pre-adolescent beauty pageant.

Now comes “The Kids Are All Right,” the latest effort from rising director Lisa Cholodenko. The family in this film consists of a long-term, devoted lesbian couple, their son, and their daughter. Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) have each borne a child via the same anonymous sperm donor, thus making the kids half-siblings.

Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson) are precocious and well-adjusted. They live in a comfortable Los Angeles development where workaholic Nic is an OB-GYN and dabbler Jules is thinking of becoming a landscape architect. 

All is reasonably well in their world until younger son Laser decides he wants to find his donor dad—Paul, played by Mark Ruffalo. Nic and Jules, card-carrying liberals in theory, approve of this—“in theory.” In reality, of course, they are quite anxious.

Paul turns out to be a likable, carefree, attractive, heterosexual man who owns an organic restaurant but whose greatest skill may be the ease with which he seduces women. I’ll leave to your imagination how that skill factors into the story. It is sufficient to say that with Paul on the scene, the balance of family life is upset.

Given the subject matter of this film, it might be tempting to call this a “gay film.” That would be wrong. “The Kids Are All Right” is a family film—that is, it is a film about a family. The world the story inhabits is one in which same-sex marriage is an assumed reality. The story focuses not on sexual preference but on the couple’s relationship and on the children’s search for identity. 

Far from preaching a socially liberal agenda, the film actually has a little fun with the psychobabble and hazy fog of liberal thinking. Jules and Nic are “fine” with their children seeking out their “donor dad”—but not really. And they are “fine” (read, horrified) when they suspect that Laser might be gay. This may be the first film I have seen in which a progressive social issue is not treated in a heavy-handed way by its director.

The performances in this film are a pleasure to watch. Bening and Moore may be two of the most talented actresses of this generation. They are given great material to work with in Cholodenko’s witty and insightful script, but the complexity of these characters is mostly the creation of its masterful performers. 

Bening’s Nic is dominant, driven, controlling yet occasionally surprisingly vulnerable. Bening has played characters similar to Nic before, most notably the competitive and driven wife-mother in “American Beauty.” 

Moore’s Jules is Nic’s yang, a free-spirit whose search for a career has never quite panned out and whose in-the-moment approach to life clearly irritates her partner while remaining a source of great attraction. 

Ruffalo’s Paul is multi-dimensional too. Paul becomes enough of a friend and confidant to his donor kids that we find it hard to villainize him for changing the family chemistry.

Cholodenko’s script captures with accuracy the affection mingled with fatigue in a long-term marriage. The kids are old enough to see through the inconsistencies and foibles of their moms. Being married with two kids myself, I almost said an audible amen in the theater after Nic explained to the kids that marriage is a promise you make, and sometimes it’s really, really hard to hang in with that promise. 

The Kids Are All Right” is a story of a family told with a postmodern sensibility, but it is a story, too, about families everywhere. See it with someone you love.
—Dave and his wife, Anita Greiser, have survived twelve moves in eight states over their 31 years together. Recently they moved into a college neighborhood near the North Baltimore Mennonite Church, which Dave serves as pastor.