“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 might 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 idea that issues will work out, {that a} seemingly dysfunctional friendship could make two folks surprisingly good wedding ceremony dates and even higher lovers. From Nora Ephron classics resembling “You’ve Received Mail” to more moderen indie movies resembling “Plus One” and “Rye Lane,” nice romantic comedies, like a life-changing love affair, supply 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 discovered that Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King could be starring in a romantic comedy collectively, I assumed they only may be capable to attain it. Nevertheless, as a substitute 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 might even be touted as a mash-up of Prime Video’s current age-gap romance “The Concept 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 purported to be a rom-com with emotional depth or a parody of 1? It doesn’t know. This downside 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 movie star (he hasn’t been to a grocery retailer in 10 years) who has forgotten how one can deal with different folks with respect, particularly his assistant Zara. Zara is the quintessential entitled younger one that 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 seems like her producing profession ought to start sooner, so she will be able to 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 lady, not a mom or spouse to a person who was jealous of her success.
Within the opening scene, Zara is cursing in standstill site visitors as a result of she’s late to ship a pair of diamond earrings to Chris, so he can break up with the newest girl he’s seeing. Concurrently, Brooke is throughout Los Angeles bemoaning to Bates’ character (her former editor and mother-in-law) about her incapability to put in writing. Neither of those tropes play properly.
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 manner. For instance, when Chris and Brooke first meet, their dialog is stilted and fascinating and unobtrusively humorous (he doesn’t know the parable of Icarus regardless of starring in an enormous franchise known as “Icarus Rush”). Their first kiss is a part of a candy trade of dialogue that is among the film’s few swoony moments. However, because the encounter turns into steamier, the tone shifts.
Instantly, a widow who hasn’t kissed somebody in a very long time is letting a person rip off her gown (nevertheless it’s OK as a result of it was 50% off at Nordstrom) and tearing his bespoke shirt comprised of the wool of an endangered animal off his unbelievably toned physique (however she’s definitely worth the unethical clothes’s harm). When King’s character walks in on them and runs into the door, including bodily comedy to the combo, the second turns into much more complicated. Was it purported to be candy, horny, 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 purported 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 to droop if the opposite elements of the film had been working, however they aren’t.
Finally, the tropes and tonal shifts overshadow the much less produced moments which are recent and fascinating and will have underpinned a really 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 Concept of You,” it glosses over the complexities it presents to turn out to be 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 beloved.
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 fashionable 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 right now? Why is “Plus One” an aberration?
In our hyperbolic, engagement-driven world, the whole lot 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 anticipate 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 Concept of You” turn out to be successes not as a result of they’re nice however as a result of we’re prepared to eat them in giant volumes. I nonetheless maintain this up as proof that individuals need rom-coms, however I’m shedding religion within the new films we now qualify as “nice” ones.