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Director/co-writer Lisa Cholodenko gracefully weaves unabashed honesty into this tale of a modern family riding out unsettling changes fueled by individual searches for identity.
Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple comfortably raising their two teenage children. The family's lives are upended when 15-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and his 18-year-old sister, Joni (Mia Wasikowska, named after Nic's favorite singer, Joni Mitchell), track down the anonymous sperm donor partly responsible for their existence. Fascinated by the charismatic Paul (Mark Ruffalo), an organic restaurateur, the kids warm to the man they refer to as "our donor dad."
Everything about this film rings true, from the dialogue to the California homes and evocative musical score.
At times, it feels like a companion piece to "Please Give," another witty and well-observed slice of modern family life. And, like "Toy Story 3," it features the emotionally charged process of a child preparing to leave for college.
What makes this story so effective is not that it strives to be relevant in its depiction of a gay couple raising children but that it captures real-life rhythms and sincere concerns — both everyday and existential — experienced by families of all kinds.
Theirs may be an unconventional family, but the quandaries and problems are the same as in most families. Cholodenko captures the quotidian ups and downs of relationships and the heightened emotions and curiosity that rule the teen years.
Bening gives an Oscar-caliber performance as a strong-willed, though emotionally vulnerable workaholic doctor, suspicious of the laid-back Paul. Moore is excellent as her landscape designer partner, more open-minded and temperamentally less inclined to reflection.
Two of the best actresses of their generation, they make even a contrived porn gag feel like plausible situational humor.
Ruffalo shows his depth in a pitch-perfect performance of a freewheeling guy who seems like an older brother of the rootless fellow he played so captivatingly a decade ago in "You Can Count On Me." Paul's a handsome charmer and somewhat of an overgrown kid. His father and child reunion leaves the family reeling.
Hutcherson ("Journey to the Center of the Earth") and Wasikowska ("Alice in Wonderland") are terrific and thoroughly believable as sensitive, well-adjusted teens.
"The Kids Are All Right" is probing, poignant and, above all, highly entertaining.
