Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right A film featuring Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as lesbian mothers has won the critics over upon its release in the United States. The veteran actresses play a couple fighting to keep their family together in the comedy-drama The Kids Are All Right. The couple have two teenage children, who upset their mothers' world when they track down their anonymous sperm donor father. New York Timesreviewer A.O. Scott says the film "is so canny in its insights and so agile in its negotiation of complex emotions that it deserves to stand on its own. It is outrageously funny without ever exaggerating for comic effect, and heartbreaking with only minimal melodramatic embellishment." Reviewers seem to agree that it shows gay parents as nothing unusual, with the same issues to confront as any other family. "What makes this story so effective is not that it strives to be relevant in its depiction of a gay couple raising children but that it captures real-life rhythms and sincere concerns - both everyday and existential - experienced by families of all kinds," writesClaudia Puig in USA Today. "Theirs may be an unconventional family, but the quandaries and problems are the same as in most families." Director and co-writer has told Screencrave.com normalcy is exactly what she was going for. "There are these families living in every city across the land. It is not so rarefied, it's not so special, and at the end of the day everyone has the same issues and problems. Marriages endure the same ups and downs and kids have to break away from their families and their parents, you know, go off to college." A New Zealand release date has not yet been listed. Watch the trailer for lesbian film The Kids Are All Right below:
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 12th July 2010 - 11:03am