“No great tryst ever started with someone being rational,” says the always-wise Kathy Bates as grandmother Leila Ford in Netflix’s latest rom-com, “A Family Affair.” One might argue that the identical truism additionally applies to romantic comedies, particularly the nice ones.
Like all films, rom-coms ask us to droop our disbelief, to settle into our sofa and let ourselves imagine in anonymously heartfelt electronic mail exchanges and want for bouquets of sharpened pencils. We watch them with the assumption that issues will work out, {that a} seemingly dysfunctional friendship could make two individuals surprisingly good wedding ceremony dates and even higher lovers. From Nora Ephron classics corresponding to “You’ve Got Mail” to newer indie movies corresponding to “Plus One” and “Rye Lane,” nice romantic comedies, like a life-changing love affair, provide each escape and self-discovery. And, most significantly, they remind us to hope.
Admittedly, it is a excessive bar for a style that’s so usually dismissed and undervalued, however once I realized that Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King could be starring in a romantic comedy collectively, I believed they simply would possibly be capable of attain it. Nonetheless, as an alternative of lifting up a style, “A Family Affair” reinforces the unhappy state of rom-coms proper now.
In it, Efron performs troublesome film star Chris Cole who falls for Brooke (Kidman), the mom of his 24-year-old assistant, Zara (King). Just like the solid, the premise is promising. On its floor, the movie might even be touted as a mash-up of Prime Video’s latest age-gap romance “The Idea of You” with a traditional “Notting Hill”-esque twist (a film star falling in love with a non-celebrity).
Nonetheless, in execution, “A Family Affair” misses the mark and sometimes doesn’t really feel like a rom-com in any respect. Is the film speculated to be a rom-com with emotional depth or a parody of 1? It doesn’t know. This downside is most evident within the stark dichotomy between the characters’ tropey personas and their honest relationships.
Efron performs a caricature of a film star, embodying the stereotype of being an out-of-touch superstar (he hasn’t been to a grocery retailer in 10 years) who has forgotten deal with different individuals with respect, particularly his assistant Zara. Zara is the quintessential entitled younger one who is working her first job and struggling as a result of she’s a — dare I exploit the time period — nepo child (her mother is principally Joan Didion) who looks like her producing profession ought to start sooner, so she will be able to step exterior of her mother’s shadow. That mother, Brooke, is affected by author’s block and hasn’t dated within the decade since her husband died, and she or he longs to recollect what it feels prefer to be a girl, not a mom or spouse to a person who was jealous of her success.
Within the opening scene, Zara is cursing in standstill site visitors as a result of she’s late to ship a pair of diamond earrings to Chris, so he can break up with the newest girl he’s seeing. Concurrently, Brooke is throughout Los Angeles bemoaning to Bates’ character (her former editor and mother-in-law) about her incapability to jot down. Neither of those tropes play nicely.
However the actors do. The result’s that Kidman, Efron and King’s supply of Carrie Solomon’s unbalanced script swings the movie from satire to sincerity in a disorienting approach. For instance, when Chris and Brooke first meet, their dialog is stilted and fascinating and unobtrusively humorous (he doesn’t know the parable of Icarus regardless of starring in an enormous franchise referred to as “Icarus Rush”). Their first kiss is a part of a candy alternate of dialogue that is likely one of the film’s few swoony moments. However, because the encounter turns into steamier, the tone shifts.
Instantly, a widow who hasn’t kissed somebody in a very long time is letting a person rip off her costume (however it’s OK as a result of it was 50% off at Nordstrom) and tearing his bespoke shirt constructed from the wool of an endangered animal off his unbelievably toned physique (however she’s definitely worth the unethical clothes’s harm). When King’s character walks in on them and runs into the door, including bodily comedy to the combination, the second turns into much more complicated. Was it speculated to be candy, attractive, satirical or foolish?
This tonal inconsistency plagues the movie. It additionally emphasizes its plot holes. For instance, Chris is so well-known that he’s unable to grocery store, however he can sit in his assistant’s pediatrician workplace (a setting that’s speculated to play as comedic) subsequent to her and her mother who he simply slept with. That is the type of disbelief one would possibly be capable of droop if the opposite elements of the film have been working, however they aren’t.
In the end, the tropes and tonal shifts overshadow the much less produced moments which might be recent and fascinating and will have underpinned a really nice rom-com. Most of those moments happen throughout conversations, particularly within the second half of the film. Zara is combating the belief that her mother’s life is about greater than mothering, and she or he is an individual who deserves happiness, however she additionally doesn’t need Chris to harm her mother. Brooke is having a tough time opening herself as much as a relationship that might finish with damage. This mother-daughter dynamic and depiction of coming-of-age as a lifelong course of are simply the movie’s highlights, and it ought to have leaned into them.
As a substitute, “A Family Affair” is simply one other iteration of an overproduced rom-com like December’s “Anyone but You.” And, like April’s “The Idea of You,” it glosses over the complexities it presents to turn into a generic model of palatable and consumable.
Whereas these rom-coms (and “Anyone but You’s” field workplace success and the resurgence of rom-coms on streaming platforms) have been lauded as proof that the style is again, all of them have left me rubbing my eyes in disbelief, questioning if I simply watched the identical film that different critics and viewers stated they beloved.
I’m not penning this to be a contrarian or detract from a viewer’s enjoyment (all artwork is subjective), however I do wish to know what occurred to the trendy rom-com in its purest kind? When did we lose the plot of clandestine emails and No. 2 pencils, and why is it so uncommon to seize that magic in films as we speak? Why is “Plus One” an aberration?
In our hyperbolic, engagement-driven world, every thing is both “the greatest” or “the worst,” and “A Family Affair” is neither. It’s mediocre, run-of-the-mill, precisely what now we have come to count on from most content material. And that’s the issue. It’s watchable.
When the objective is getting eyes on the small display screen, rom-coms like this and “The Idea of You” turn into successes not as a result of they’re nice however as a result of we’re prepared to eat them in giant volumes. I nonetheless maintain this up as proof that folks need rom-coms, however I’m shedding religion within the new films we now qualify as “great” ones.
