The Kids Are All Right

2010

This dramedy scores a 94% at Rotten Tomatoes, and has been touted as an Oscar contender, but that's really only because it's one of those "flavor of the day" movies, this time about a long-term lesbian couple raising two very normal teenagers who want to meet their sperm donor.

There's nothing wrong with that idea, and there's nothing wrong with the movie. It's pleasant enough to watch and the characters are complex. You just can't quite figure out why anybody would think this film should be an Oscar contender. I guess it has been elevated to that status because it's promoting our thought for the year - that children being raised in non-traditional families are no different from any other kids. That's OK with me, I guess. There's no statistically significant evidence to confirm or refute that hypothesis, so I guess I'll tentatively accept it in the name of tolerance, and because it seems reasonable.

But here's the deal. This film, as I see it, has absolutely nothing at all to do with a lesbian relationship. With only tiny changes in the script, it could just as easily be about a man and a woman who, for one reason or another, require a surrogate father for their children. Indeed, the gay partners are so completely de-gayed by the script that one of them eventually has an affair, it is with a man, her sperm donor. Of course, that's the whole point of the film - that a lesbian couple raising kids in a long-term marriage can behave exactly the same and face the exact same problems as any hetero couple in the same situation. I don't disagree with that point, but my argument is that if the film had been made from the exact same script, except with the doctor character being a male in need of surrogate sperm, nobody would be touting The Kids Are All Right as an Oscar candidate. It would just be another routine character-based dramedy starring good actors, like so many that come and go every year. I don't mean to diss the movie, because it is executed well and I enjoyed it, but I do think that if The Kids Are All Right gets any Oscar nods, it will be because its message is timely, not because that message is delivered in a particularly memorable, complex, or interesting way that will cause us to remember the film years from now.

Julianne Moore HD film clips (samples below)

She may have flashed her crotch in the last samples below

 

Yaya De Costa HD film clip (sample below)