I love a good romantic comedy. Hell, I love anything romance. It’s one of those people that loves an escape from life and well, romance movies give me just that. Now, if there is one person that I would think could handle a romance movie, that would be Richard LaGravenese. I may not like most of his directing work, but having seen P.S. I Love You, I said I would have faith.
When I am wrong, I say it and here I was really wrong to place faith here, because LaGravenese takes talented actors and makes you want to look away quickly because it is so damn cringe.
Hear me out before you tear me apart.
The premise of the movie is a good one, “A surprising romance kicks off comic consequences for a young woman, her mother, and her movie star boss as they face the complications of love, sex, and identity.”
It’s just the execution of the idea that lacks, is all over the place, and makes me wonder if P.S. I Love You is the only good movie that this director will ever make.
Zara (Joey King) is an assistant to Chris Cole (Zac Efron) and she hates it. She stays with the job because Cole has promised her a promotion to producer. He has no intention of following through with that, treats her like she’s less than, and has no respect for her time.
He also has no respect for her ideas – which are good. Chris Cole is the boss from hell and it’s no surprise that she quits. What is surprising is that her mom isn’t really that supportive of her. She thinks that she doesn’t follow through on things and runs when it gets hard.
And here goes my first issue. Brooke (Nicole Kidman), who is Zara’s mom, seems wishy-washy with her support. She has given up everything for her daughter, she didn’t want her working for Chris, and yet the first opportunity that her daughter takes to regain control of her life, she’s not supportive?
I question how it makes sense.
Brooke stopped living and started existing when her husband died. Brooke has not found the inspiration to write, and she’s an award-winning writer. She’s close to her mother-in-law and values her opinion more than most opinions. Brooke enjoys a life of existence, not living. It immediately feels quite strange when Chris shows up at the house, she gets drunk with him and sleeps with him.
While I do understand that in movies, people are constantly changing, the way that Brooke is all over the place from the very beginning is what throws me off about her.
If you would think that my issue with this movie is an older woman with a younger man, that is not it at all. I actually love movies that are like this. Yes, I love the trope, but I also relate to it. I think that sometimes at a certain point, we’re expected to treat women who reach a certain age like they are dead. The word spinster comes to mind. But you don’t stop being attractive or being attracted to someone just because you reach the age of 40 or 50 or even older. As a human being, you are still breathing and moving forward in life. Even if you’re in menopause, your hormones are still there. You can be sexual and be older. So the age difference between Brooke and Chris isn’t my issue.
As a matter of fact, I am like get yours, girl. Cheering you on.
What I do take issue with is that at the core of this movie, it’s about a mother/daughter relationship and the outside things that affect that relationship and make it change. If that isn’t what the intention of A Family Affair was – well, we’re looking at people being even worse at execution than we thought. We’re missing the beats in this movie that make us understand why it is that Brooke puts someone else before her daughter so suddenly.
Quite frankly to me, the way the movie portrays Brooke her actions come across was that she was taken in by looks and celebrity versus a human being. Not that a lot of people don’t do that. And hey, maybe it’s that Chris and Brooke do fall in love, but the way that Chris is and then all of a sudden the way he does a 180 with Brooke, it doesn’t feel genuine. So, I do watch and get Zara’s trepidation with the person that Chris has been and his all of a sudden change.
None of it feels genuine.
What does feel genuine is Zara’s love for her Mom and that she want to protect her. What does feel genuine is that Brooke gives her heart, even though it does scare her. It does not feel genuine that Brooke would look past her daughter and not see that what she’s trying to do is be there for her.
I do get that there are probably scenes that were filmed that tie it together, but instead of adding those in LaGravenese makes a movie that misses beats and has you questioning character motives. You don’t become invested in the characters, instead, you become frustrated by them and their inconsistency.
When LaGravenese directed P.S. I Love You, you became invested in the characters, because you could understand them. Here, the only character that you feel anything for is Zara. You are also entertained by her Grandmother (played by Kathy Bates). LaGravenese expects us to believe in Kidman and Efron having chemistry and it’s just not apparent. If it was Kathy Bates of Joey King’s character, well quite frankly, I was bored with the characters. I also thought that there needed to be a rewrite of this script to make the character’s motivation known.
However, knowing that directors change things all of the time, maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe the original script was a lot better and the director changed it too much. Maybe the editing was lacking. There are just too many what-ifs.
What I do know is that it was cringy to watch. Sometimes, painful. The two feel odd as if it’s being forced for us to believe that they would be together for anything past the celebrity. Zac Efron’s character of Chris Cole is a gigantic toddler throwing a tantrum and needing to be disciplined. Am I supposed to believe that he doesn’t have Mommy and Daddy issues? That is exactly what the directional choices make me believe. He thrives on chaos, craves discipline, and doesn’t know how to commit to anything.
Even as I attempt to get past the way that LaGravenese directs the characters, I am left with his indecision of what type of director he is. What has he tried to make? He seems to want to be a Nancy Meyers type romantic comedy director but fails miserably. The settings are all up in the air, the direction. the continuity. The movie reeks of desperation to be a part of the growing resurgence of romantic comedies, but fails. Nancy Meyers he will never be.
I have a hard time believing that he could really make a decision that comes across to improve a movie. Because of his movie history I have an even harder time believing that he understands romance.
The movie is just off. Though it wraps up in a pretty bow, that bow comes too little too late. We’ve already suffered through two hours of cringy awkwardness and well, we’d like a refund of our time.
Cause A Family Affair was a waste of time.
