Better Than All Right

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Let it be known that I love Julianne Moore. I mean, it's already known by the might of this link here, but let it be known louder and clearer here at the start that I do, I do, I do love Julianne Moore. I've loved her since the shards of glass rain down on her in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (although thankfully she's gone on to slightly more substantial work since then).

So when I say that I positively adored Annette Bening in Lisa Cholodenko's terrific new flick The Kids Are All Right more than anything else on-screen, you should know just what a feat that is. That's not to really slight Annette Bening or her past career; she's just never been an actress I've really gravitated towards that much. Looking through her credits I enjoyed her shrill histrionics in American Beauty and her dopey New Age-isms in Mars Attacks! and it's been a very long time but I have fond memories of her in The Grifters. But there's a lot of her work I've never seen - no, I've never seen Bugsy. Nor Being Julia. She's just not really been someone I've sought out. I admired the fact that she tamed the Beatty beast, but that was the height of it.

But she really is Best In Show, in a really fucking good show, here. The first thing I noticed was how she dropped her voice slightly lower, butching herself up in a small but convincing way. It's not overdone or anything, it sounds entirely natural, but it's there and it serves the character well. And when, in a scene I can't stop thinking about this morning, her character warbles out some Joni Mitchell and starts floating on up the register, you'll understand why it was a vital touch.

The film is so much funnier than I was expecting. I knew going in with these actors that the dramatic bits would be in good hands, but I didn't expect the laughs to be so consistent and true (recognizing Juli's past stabs at comedy as... not entirely successful... increased the skepticism). They play up a lot of the jokiness in the trailer - a trailer I frankly found off-putting - but I just figured they were pushing it as more comic than it was... well, turns out I had it backwards. It's a very very funny movie. The observational comedy is perfectly aimed through-out, thankfully staying small and human and never straying from the delicate tone, swerving back and forth from comedy to drama sometimes within seconds. Watch the way that Joni Mitchell scene plays out and stand in awe of the way its really silly and kind of obnoxious and then beautiful and sad and then very funny again all within the span of a minute or so. That shit ain't as easy as Cholodenko's making it look, people.

Like Nathaniel's warned it does seem somehow traitorous to throw too much pressure on a movie as small as this, but I really truly did find it delightful from start to finish so I don't care. Caution, meet wind! Don't go in expecting fireworks, but you'll be pleased by the sparklers. (groan) But Juli gets to actually be funny here, praise the heavens, and she is, she is funny! And Mark Ruffalo gets to be sexy as hell, which we all knew he could be since day one, but he succeeds anew all the same. (Also, he is naked a lot. Just thought you should know.) But they both get so much to play with beyond that too; everybody does. Can you tell I dug this movie? I dug this movie.

And I even understand why Mia Wasikowska is getting all this work thrown at her now! I hadn't seen In Treatment so all I knew was from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and while that mess certainly wasn't her fault any movie that can erase the all-encompassing scourge of that horrendous movie from one of its main players is a special movie indeed.

The Kids Are All Right opens on July 9th. See it!
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