thelesterlee
Welcome to Deaderiousness movie reviews where we break down the good, the bad and the ugly of films we love, hate and just watched because we couldn’t find anything else. Spoilers, probably.
What happens in A Family Affair?
Okay, so Zac Efron plays Chris Cole, a movie star from some sort of Icarus-inspired trilogy concerned his career is on the precipice of failure as he prepares to work on a film with a broken script he continually describes as Die Hard meets Nightmare on Elm Street with a little bit of Speed.
His assistant Joey King, Zara Ford, gets fired (and/or quits) after she shows up late to a restaurant with Chris’s breakup earrings that he gives every girl he dumps.
Zara’s mom, Brooke Harwood, is an award-winning novelist who lost her husband 11 years ago and hasn’t dated since, well, until the faithful day Chris Cole comes to their house, begging to re-hire her daughter Zara, only to find Brooke cleaning the house and they just like, can’t help but fall in love.
Chris Cole can get any girl he wants and he wants this random old lady and Brooke Harwood hasn’t kissed a man in like, a decade but suddenly falls head over heels for this asshole actor who takes advantage of her daughter and genuinely did not know that Icarus was an old mythology story.
This woman who could be an Ivy League professor really likes this 35-year-old boy who lacks intellectual curiosity.
Naturally, Zara freaks out because of course she does. Imagine you get into a big fight with your boss, lose your job and then come home to see your mom grinding on his wee wee.
However, everyone in Zara’s life gaslights her into believing she’s in the wrong for having a problem with her MOTHER dating her BOSS.
Her mother—who I’m sure has had several suitors over the last 11 years and elected to be single—swan dived head first into a relationship with like, the Chris Pratt of this universe and her boss—who makes her search Los Angeles for coffee with real cow milk and purchase breakup jewelry.
Zara’s best friend, her grandmother, everyone treats this girl like she’s a selfish little baby even though she’s seen firsthand how Chris treats women and doesn’t want her widowed mother to suffer the same fate. How dare she.
I genuinely do not remember if Chris Cole and Brooke Harwood get together at the end. I believe there’s a ‘2 years later’ with Zara becoming a respected film producer and Brooke dropping a book about her tryst with Chris.
Shrug.
3 Things I Loved
1. Kathy Bates plays the mother of Nicole Kidman’s dead husband and I imagine they both said yes to this movie because money buys nice things.
And although this is clearly a comedy movie, it’s almost as if Kidman and Bates agreed that if they take those massive Netflix checks, they’re going all out in their scenes together.
Kathy Bates and Nicole Kidman only have, maybe, two scenes with each other but they both act like they’re performing Shakespeare. It’s like they’re campaigning for Oscars between scenes of Zac Efron complaining about the French director calling him fat.
2. Joey King turns this movie around after she finds them in bed together and freaks out. Prior to that, Zac was being more weird than funny and as I mentioned, Nicole Kidman and Kathy Bates were auditioning for Julliard so Joey King stepped up to let the audience know this is a comedy and you can play on your phone if you want and relax.
3. Kathy Bates.
3 Things I Hated
1. The lighting for this movie is offputting as hell. It’s like QVC product lighting. As if this is filmed from the clouds of heaven. And I know it’s nerdy to complain about technical shit like this but it’s jarring. It looks like a nuke went off in the back and the sky is about to evaporate everyone in the room.
2. I recognize Zac Efron had some sort of accident and doctors had to fix his jaw but this man no longer looks human. Maybe, uh, it’s time for Efron to learn how to direct and start working behind the camera because he looks like a Zac Efron wax figure claymated to life. And he just pretends to be normal people like he doesn’t look like an ice cream cone left in the sun.
3. A Family Affair.
Final Verdict
Between May December and The Idea of You and now A Family Affair, I’m about done with movies about two characters with an age gap. Having been in relationships with older women, it’s never that interesting.
Add that with stories about rich, successful men who sleep around but are secretly lonely and desperate for real intimacy.
There’s something in here but yea, this story has been told a bajillion times and way better. Shout out to Kathy Bates though. The GOAT.
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