Key Highlights
- Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, and Joey King headline the Netflix romantic comedy ‘A Family Affair’.
- The film explores a complex love triangle with multigenerational layers.
- Directed by Richard LaGravenese, the film blends humor and heart but struggles with execution.
- ‘A Family Affair’ premieres on Netflix on June 28, 2024.
(livesinsight.com) – Among the perennial reasons we go to the movies is the onscreen heat between impossibly charismatic stars. The summer of 2024 has delivered the goods in that department so far: Consider the sweltering Anne Hathaway-Nicholas Galitzine romance “The Idea Of You,” the disarming, post-Barbenheimer pairing of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in “The Fall Guy,” Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist’s scorching triangle in “Challengers,” or “Hit Man” turning Glen Powell and Adria Arjona into eager bedfellows. On paper, Richard LaGravenese’s “A Family Affair” has every ingredient to join this elite list. Sadly, the film plays more like an artless quickie than a fully fleshed-out romance.
It’s a mystery how little chemistry there is to be found here between Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, two of Hollywood’s most magnetic stars. In fact, their courtship and attraction unfold so ineptly throughout LaGravenese’s contemporary romantic comedy that one can’t help but miss the duo’s previous collaboration, Lee Daniels’ 2012 campfest “The Paperboy,” which packed more steam even in its throwaway moments than “A Family Affair” manages in its key intimate scenes.
Written by debuting scribe Carrie Solomon, this messy film tells a multigenerational story, with Joey King leading proceedings as Zara Ford, a twenty-something Tinseltown resident with big dreams of becoming a major film producer. For now, like most early-career showbiz hopefuls, she’s stuck in a lowly assistant job. Her boss? Superstar Hollywood heartthrob Chris Cole (an uncharacteristically detached Efron), for whom she seems to do everything: pick up his dry cleaning, go on grocery runs, advise him on screenplays, rush expensive breakup gifts to his multiple soon-to-be-ex-girlfriends to prevent a scene, and so on. Not only does the job seems like a 24/7 gig, it also isn’t creatively rewarding. For starters, Zara doesn’t approve of Chris’s high-concept projects — “Die Hard” meets “Miracle on 34th Street” meets “Speed,” for example — and she is so over his professional insecurities. If only he would just listen to her instincts.
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On the plus side, Zara has loving support from her mother Brooke (Kidman), a famous writer, at whose palatial estate she still lives expense-free. But she’s unhappy, even angry, as she feels she is ready for the next step in her career — whether as an associate producer, or running Chris’s company after only a couple of years of work as an assistant. (Kids these days.) For a while, no one — not even her spirited best friend Genie (Liza Koshy) — challenges Zara’s privileged worldview, at least until her self-centered personal and professional freakouts become too much to tolerate.
What sets off Zara’s downward spiral is her job resignation, and the spontaneous romance that sparks between Chris and Brooke — the former, a lonely man worshipped but not understood by millions, the latter, jadedly single since the death of Zara’s dad more than a decade ago. Seemingly acting out of protective instincts for her mother — after all, she’s seen what a despicable womanizer Chris can be — Zara complains constantly that her mom is dating her ex-boss, dismissing both Brooke and Genie in their respective needs from her. Brooke thankfully finds the encouragement she doesn’t get from her daughter through a lovely relationship with her legendary editor Leila (Kathy Bates, effortlessly grounding the film), who also happens to be her mother-in-law.
In charting the growing closeness of Chris and Brooke, LaGravenese’s direction is oddly rigid and dull. Across the magical studio lots they stroll through and the private meals they have away from prying eyes, you almost beg the film to loosen up a little and let the beautiful leads organically relax into its rhythm. Instead, “A Family Affair” insists on staccato beats and synthetic visuals. It’s surprising that famed Robert Zemeckis collaborator Don Burgess is behind the film’s shallow, one-note cinematography. Indeed, “A Family Affair” looks so lifeless that you wonder whether it’s being purposely uncinematic, out to fulfill the prophecy of the catch-all phrase “content.”
The production design also leaves a lot to be desired: While Brooke’s idyllic home (the cryptic location of which so doesn’t look like L.A., by the way) is supposed to give off a lived-in Nancy Myers vibe with its fancy kitchen and serenely furnished living spaces, it looks like a showroom at best. Same goes for the Hallmark-card mountain lodge where the film’s main quartet spends Christmas. You’ve probably seen sitcoms with more authentic interiors.
In the end, everything falls into place much as one would expect. Friendships are restored (though poor Genie still gets the short end of the stick), love finds a way, and careers take off. Some of the film’s inside-baseball jokes about a town obsessed with soulless sequels and multiverses fortunately land. But the biggest joke seems to be on “A Family Affair” itself, for wasting Efron’s underrated talents and Kidman’s peerless range so clumsily.This all very well could be a fever dream, or a slightly buzzed hallucination. Such are the thoughts that pass as the white wine is uncorked — let’s be real, it’s a twist-off — and “A Family Affair” opens with real-life Zac Efron red carpet footage of the actor at TIFF. But this isn’t TMZ, this is a scripted Netflix rom-com. And we love it.
Directed by Richard LaGravenese
Directed by “Beautiful Creatures” helmer Richard LaGravenese from a script by Carrie Solomon, “A Family Affair” reunites Efron with his “The Paper Boy” co-star Nicole Kidman, and adds in beloved everywoman Joey King to make a different kind of unconventional love triangle. Both Efron and King’s characters just want Kidman to be a supportive mother type: One as her actual mom, and the other as a MILF.
King plays Zara, the 24-year-old daughter of Kidman’s famous novelist character Brooke. While Zara wants to be a Hollywood agent, she’s quite literally stuck in rush hour traffic most of the time while catering to her A-list actor boss Chris Cole’s (Efron) every whim. It’s Zara who brings the jewelry Chris forgot for his break-up date, a signature move where he gifts his love interest a pair of earrings — and not the engagement ring they expect — before kicking them to the curb.
Chris is a heartbreaker, and therefore Zara’s shock at discovering Chris and her own mother getting it on is quite understandable. There are no games here: Chris is well-aware of the fact that Brooke is Zara’s mom, and Zara learns early on that Chris is determined on wooing her parent. And that lack of real conflict, other than Zara worrying that Chris will inevitably gift Brooke her own set of goodbye earrings, is where “A Family Affair” falters.
Joey King Struggles to Shine
King doesn’t quite unleash her full acting ability, which audiences gleaned from her harrowing portrayal of Gypsy Rose Blanchard in Emmy-winning “The Act,” and her character Zara feels like she’s in a different film. “A Family Affair” can’t decide whether to be a coming-of-age story with Zara at the center, or a tale of a middle-aged woman reclaiming herself after being a single parent. While the attempt at bridging the generational divide in theory makes for a loftier plot, “A Family Affair” is lacking the nuance to do either well. And so, despite King’s inherent charm, it’s her storyline that falls flat. It is difficult to be pitted up against Kidman and Efron, after all.
Efron’s Chris is the ideal mix of action hero star and sensitive man-child, a perfect blend for Brooke to mother. Chris is most famous for his “Icarus Rush” franchise, which even leads him to a stop on viral talk show “Hot Ones.” Yet after starring in “Icarus” films as the titular character for years, Chris has no idea who Icarus even is. Brooke wows him with her knowledge of basic mythology. Their relationship is as banal as Brooke simply knowing more than him. The couple frolic in a backlot set and even have a “Big Fat Liar”-esque dress up scene that gives way to Chris giving a monologue about finding fame as a teenager. Efron’s Chris seems to be a meta-commentary on his own career about typecasting, being in the industry for most of his life, and more. It even gives us Efron singing along to Cher’s “Do You Believe in Love After Love,” a moment which should rival Kidman’s AMC ads for breaking the internet.
‘A Family Affair’ and Efron’s Comeback
“A Family Affair” truly is Efron’s film, for better and worse at times. And the feature does slot right in with the recent trend of age-gap romances. There definitely is something is in the air for widows and divorcées finding love again, just as Efron and Cher belt out. Yet “A Family Affair” doesn’t really stand up against even “The Idea of You” (which has already become a rom-com classic of sorts), nor does it ever feel scandalous enough to merit comparison to the likes of “May December” or Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer.” The plot here is a little too convenient for any such prurience, but it will no doubt still resonate with audiences of a certain age, given the fact that both Kidman and Efron are older than their “The Idea of You” counterparts too. It doesn’t hurt that Kathy Bates is cast as Kidman’s book editor mother-in-law, a sly nod to her iconic turn in “Misery.”
And while the Academy Award chances of “A Family Affair” are definitively zero, it’s still a lovely reminder just how much the rom-com world has missed would-be Oscar nominee Zac Efron — because let’s face it, “The Iron Claw” was robbed during the 2023 awards season. With “A Family Affair,” Efron picks up where “17 Again” left off, and it’s a delight to see this former teen heartthrob back in a similar mode. Whatever the streamer’s faults, Netflix has a knack for helping beloved actors return to their former glory, and Efron makes the most of his time to shine.
Rating: B-
“A Family Affair” will be available to stream on Netflix starting Friday, June 28, 2024.