A Family Affair

Romantic movies are great - when they work. Both Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman are also fine actors - when they have good materials to work with.

Unfortunately, this movie doesn't work for me. The premise is ok - it's par for the course for romantic movies, and having a big age difference isn't a problem - it can actually be done well: think, "Harold and Maud".

The issue is that I didn't really sense great chemistry between the two characters. The setup just didn't land. Everything seemed forced to go along with what the plot requires. I think a different script could have made a big difference.

Which is ironic, given a plot of the movie.

"A Family Affair" is simply not funny nor romantic. Joey KIng's character just comes across as bitter and hateful, rather than being a humorous obstacle to Efron's and Kidman's characters that she really needed to be.

Nicole Kidman, judging solely by the expensive LA-area home of hers, is successful author Brooke Harwood. Her husband passed away some 11 years earlier and she is living a mostly quiet life with a 24-yr-old daughter who has moved back in while trying to get her movie or TV production career energized.

Her daughter works as an assistant for an often juvenile, demanding, and entitled actor, played by Zac Efron as Chris Cole. Strictly by accident Chris meets Brooke, not even knowing who she is. He is smitten, even though later the two characters say that he is 16 years younger than Brooke. (In real life Kidman is 21 years older than Efron.)

The daughter is played by Joey King as Zara Ford. King is one of the better actresses of her generation and her role here is no exception. In fact, even though Kidman and Efron are the bigger stars, and much of the focus in on their budding relationship, the story is more Zara's story. She knows Chris very well and she desperately wants to convince her mother that he is not good for her. Zara's character arc is to respect her mother and her choices.

The whole movie is more about Zara than anything else.

Also in a very good role is veteran Kathy Bates as the grandma, Leila Ford. She has a special relationship with Zara and is instrumental in helping her face reality.

My wife and I watched it streaming, it is a better movie than we thought it was going to be.

Just like Amazon's 'The Idea of You', this film visits the age-gap romance of the older woman (who's 'normal') with the younger man (who's famous).

Here, in this iteration, the plot is split between the character Zara Ford and her aspirations to produce films and using her celebrity boss, Chris Cole, to get there and her single mother, author/writer Brooke Harwood, who discovers an exciting connection with her daughter's boss.

Romance movies are, at its core, simple tropes and relies on those standard cliches. That's what we love about romance movies. What elevates the basic romance is the chemistry and overall plot that at least tries to throw some 'thing' to make it less typical and a tad more elevated or has decent acting.

Sadly, A Family Affair fails on many fronts. My rating is purely for Kathy Bates as the MIL to Kidman's character, whose husband has been gone 10+ years before, and the daughter, Zara Ford, played by Joey King, who is the PA to an obnoxious, shallow and selfish self-proclaimed movie star.

The number one problem are our leads. The age-gap, a trope in and of itself, is no the problem. There is absolutely zero chemistry between Kidman (who plays Brook Harwood) and Efron (who plays Chris Cole). Not to mention that their very faces are terribly distracting--in that, they've both had so much work done, you can't help but notice it and not really get past it. If there had been decent chemistry between them, all that could be forgiven to a degree.

The second issue is the acting. It's...rather terrible. Especially by Kidman and Efron, the latter whose ability is more Hallmark B-level skills. The only saving grace was King and Bates, who made it even remotely watchable.

I think the plot angle of King's character is actually a fun idea and King executes it brilliantly. She carries the movie. However, the rest of the plot is pretty miserable and nothing to really swoon at.

Also, because this movie came out so soon after Anne Hathaway's similar movie, which also lacked chemistry between its leads, it takes the general winds out of this movie. Ultimately, this did have potential as the plot isn't bad. Who knew that Efron and Kidman would suck and actually hurt the movie vs make it better?

If anything, watch it for Joey King and Kathy Bates.

Seriously, this would have been such a great film. The ONLY thing that saved this film is Joey King and Kathy Bates.

Nicole looks like a stone-faced unhuman and I think it's amazingly sad that so many beautiful women think they look younger and/or better with cosmetic surgery when in fact, we obviously notice and they never look better. Her hair color was horrid, her black eyebrows such a contrast that I couldn't stop looking at her instead of be involved in the movie! Zac looks like his face was frozen as well. It was very hard to continue watching it.....and again, if not for the amazing performance from Joey King, I probably would have turned it off. Kudos to her and Bates.

It's a standardized, stale romance that pales in comparison to the recent "The Idea of You" which had a lot more charm, even when that movie wasn't amazing. But it felt a lot cuter than this one and Anne Hathaway made it a lot more believable.

In "A Family Affair" though, the chemistry is visible in the faces of the two main actors instead of between them. That only furthers the artificiality of it all.

The plot evolves in a predictable way, on the acting side there are no standouts and it's directed without much flair. It's astonishing that all the prominent names behind and before the camera agreed to make such a nothing of a movie.