“No nice tryst ever began with somebody being rational,” says the always-wise Kathy Bates as grandmother Leila Ford in Netflix’s latest rom-com, “A Household Affair.” One may argue that the identical truism additionally applies to romantic comedies, particularly the nice ones.
Like all films, rom-coms ask us to droop our disbelief, to settle into our sofa and let ourselves consider in anonymously heartfelt e mail exchanges and want for bouquets of sharpened pencils. We watch them with the assumption that issues will work out, {that a} seemingly dysfunctional friendship could make two folks surprisingly good marriage ceremony dates and even higher lovers. From Nora Ephron classics reminiscent of “You’ve Received Mail” to more moderen indie movies reminiscent of “Plus One” and “Rye Lane,” nice romantic comedies, like a life-changing love affair, provide each escape and self-discovery. And, most significantly, they remind us to hope.
Admittedly, it is a excessive bar for a style that’s so typically dismissed and undervalued, however after I realized that Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King can be starring in a romantic comedy collectively, I assumed they simply may be capable of attain it. Nevertheless, as an alternative of lifting up a style, “A Household Affair” reinforces the unhappy state of rom-coms proper now.
In it, Efron performs tough film star Chris Cole who falls for Brooke (Kidman), the mom of his 24-year-old assistant, Zara (King). Just like the forged, the premise is promising. On its floor, the movie may even be touted as a mash-up of Prime Video’s current age-gap romance “The Thought of You” with a basic “Notting Hill”-esque twist (a film star falling in love with a non-celebrity).
Nevertheless, in execution, “A Household Affair” misses the mark and infrequently doesn’t really feel like a rom-com in any respect. Is the film imagined to be a rom-com with emotional depth or a parody of 1? It doesn’t know. This drawback is most evident within the stark dichotomy between the characters’ tropey personas and their honest relationships.
Efron performs a caricature of a film star, embodying the stereotype of being an out-of-touch celeb (he hasn’t been to a grocery retailer in 10 years) who has forgotten tips on how to deal with different folks with respect, particularly his assistant Zara. Zara is the quintessential entitled younger one who is working her first job and struggling as a result of she’s a — dare I exploit the time period — nepo child (her mother is mainly Joan Didion) who looks like her producing profession ought to start sooner, so she will step outdoors of her mother’s shadow. That mother, Brooke, is affected by author’s block and hasn’t dated within the decade since her husband died, and he or she longs to recollect what it feels wish to be a girl, not a mom or spouse to a person who was jealous of her success.
Within the opening scene, Zara is cursing in standstill visitors as a result of she’s late to ship a pair of diamond earrings to Chris, so he can break up with the most recent lady he’s seeing. Concurrently, Brooke is throughout Los Angeles bemoaning to Bates’ character (her former editor and mother-in-law) about her incapacity to jot down. Neither of those tropes play nicely.
However the actors do. The result’s that Kidman, Efron and King’s supply of Carrie Solomon’s unbalanced script swings the movie from satire to sincerity in a disorienting approach. For instance, when Chris and Brooke first meet, their dialog is stilted and attention-grabbing and unobtrusively humorous (he doesn’t know the parable of Icarus regardless of starring in an enormous franchise referred to as “Icarus Rush”). Their first kiss is a part of a candy change of dialogue that is among the film’s few swoony moments. However, because the encounter turns into steamier, the tone shifts.
Abruptly, a widow who hasn’t kissed somebody in a very long time is letting a person rip off her gown (however it’s OK as a result of it was 50% off at Nordstrom) and tearing his bespoke shirt constituted of the wool of an endangered animal off his unbelievably toned physique (however she’s well worth the unethical clothes’s injury). When King’s character walks in on them and runs into the door, including bodily comedy to the combination, the second turns into much more complicated. Was it imagined to be candy, attractive, satirical or foolish?
This tonal inconsistency plagues the movie. It additionally emphasizes its plot holes. For instance, Chris is so well-known that he’s unable to grocery store, however he can sit in his assistant’s pediatrician workplace (a setting that’s imagined to play as comedic) subsequent to her and her mother who he simply slept with. That is the sort of disbelief one may be capable of droop if the opposite elements of the film have been working, however they aren’t.
In the end, the tropes and tonal shifts overshadow the much less produced moments which might be recent and attention-grabbing and will have underpinned a very nice rom-com. Most of those moments happen throughout conversations, particularly within the second half of the film. Zara is scuffling with the belief that her mother’s life is about greater than mothering, and he or she is an individual who deserves happiness, however she additionally doesn’t need Chris to harm her mother. Brooke is having a tough time opening herself as much as a relationship that might finish with harm. This mother-daughter dynamic and depiction of coming-of-age as a lifelong course of are simply the movie’s highlights, and it ought to have leaned into them.
As an alternative, “A Household Affair” is simply one other iteration of an overproduced rom-com like December’s “Anybody however You.” And, like April’s “The Thought of You,” it glosses over the complexities it presents to change into a generic model of palatable and consumable.
Whereas these rom-coms (and “Anybody however You’s” field workplace success and the resurgence of rom-coms on streaming platforms) have been lauded as proof that the style is again, all of them have left me rubbing my eyes in disbelief, questioning if I simply watched the identical film that different critics and viewers stated they liked.
I’m not penning this to be a contrarian or detract from a viewer’s enjoyment (all artwork is subjective), however I do need to know what occurred to the trendy rom-com in its purest kind? When did we lose the plot of clandestine emails and No. 2 pencils, and why is it so uncommon to seize that magic in films at this time? Why is “Plus One” an aberration?
In our hyperbolic, engagement-driven world, all the pieces is both “the best” or “the worst,” and “A Household Affair” is neither. It’s mediocre, run-of-the-mill, precisely what now we have come to count on from most content material. And that’s the issue. It’s watchable.
When the objective is getting eyes on the small display screen, rom-coms like this and “The Thought of You” change into successes not as a result of they’re nice however as a result of we’re keen to eat them in giant volumes. I nonetheless maintain this up as proof that folks need rom-coms, however I’m dropping religion within the new films we now qualify as “nice” ones.