The Kids are All Right

All the rage at Sundance, nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress, said actress being the wonderful Annette Bening, with Julianne Moore AND Mark Ruffalo, so somehow I was expecting something. Hmmmm. Fairly early on in The Kids Are All Right one of our 'excellent at the communicating' lesbians attempts to explain a bit of pornography that one of the kids has discovered in Mom's sock drawer. Kid asks mom why not watch woman on woman stuff? Mom's reply: those films usually have two straight women pretending... and it lacks authenticity. BINGO!

Synopsis: Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are raising their two kids in suburban marital bliss when younger male child decides that he needs to discover his biological father and talks older female child into making that happen. Enter bio-dad (Mark Ruffalo) to disrupt marital bliss. He's an honorable bohemian and there is much good advice, and food and wine and all is peachy right until he beds one of the lesbians. That about covers it.

I'm not at all offended by a film normalizing same sex marriage and parenting. I am offended by said film using two straight actors with zero chemistry (zip) to play one dimensional gay stereotypes. That said I also find it vaguely offending that there is a great deal of sweaty adulterous heterosexual sex in a film that is supposed to be about a committed gay couple and their kids. And that the heterosexual guy is ultimately portrayed as the heavy, when pretty much everyone is behaving abysmally. Why, oh why, did this film get so much attention?
I guess because no one makes films about real gay people leading real lives. Skip this and watch Brokeback Mountain. Website here.