The Kids - and this Movie - Aren't All Right
6/10
Author: flickernatic from United Kingdom
23 November 2010

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is an entertaining movie worth seeing, at times funny, at times moving, but one that fails, frustratingly, to exploit its potential.

Nic and Jules are a lesbian couple, each with a teenage child fathered by the same anonymous sperm donor, Paul. Their children decide to contact their father and he enters, rather awkwardly, in to the family's lives. Nic and Jules' relationship is loving but passionless - they resort to watching gay porn in bed but even this fails to produce a spark - and before long, Jules and Paul become energetic lovers who meet repeatedly to pursue their affair.

Paul, who has never settled into a relationship, finds that he has fallen in love with Jules. He also discovers that the children he fathered so anonymously now mean everything to him. He wants to find a way to continue the relationship with his 'kids' and Jules. But, despite the positives he has brought to them, ultimately he is rejected by them all. Nic, Jules and the kids resume their previous lives while Paul is left out in the cold.

The dramatic situation created by Paul's arrival, his affair with Jules and its effects on Nic and the 'kids' is potentially very interesting and worth exploring. Unfortunately, the theme is treated at best half-seriously, as if Hollywood can't cope with this topic without making it into a comedy. The inclusion of several explicit sex scenes is also a distraction which adds nothing to the story. Most disappointing of all is the ending; this seemed a cop-out.

Jules is clearly bi-sexual but she suddenly claims that she is all- lesbian; Nic seems barely troubled by Jules's startling lapse; the 'kids' are overly keen to reject Paul; and all this appears to be designed to produce an old-fashioned 'happy ending' in which the lesbian couple and their children return to everyday life as if nothing had happened (what?!) - except Paul, that is, who is told to 'go and find your own family'. Are, then, the 'kids' 'all right'? On the contrary, their parents' antics appear to have left them in a dreadful mess. Maybe we are supposed to take the titleironically.

On the plus side, the acting is generally good, although Mark Ruffalo does too much mumbling and Julianne Moore tends to over-act. The outstanding performance for me was from Mia Wasikowska as the daughter, Joni. But this would have been a far better, more memorable and thought-provoking movie if it had followed through more courageously. I'm sure Jimmy McGovern would have done it a whole lot better!