THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

A long-time married couple face a mid-life crisis as the kids want to find out more about their real dad. Chaos ensues. Oh, did I mention that the marrieds are a couple of lesbians, and the donor dad is a hottie? Edit to say controversy ensues!

The Kids Are All Right is a fabulously enjoyable family and relationship comedy/drama. The fact that it is a gay family portrayed is just the icing on the cake. But the story holds a deeper complexity that gets stuck in your craw long after... and for some I have talked to, this is not a good thing.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play Nic and Jules, a long-time married couple with a couple of teenage kids. Now that their daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska) has turned 18, their 15-year-old son Laser (Josh Hutcherson) heckles his sister to use her new "of age" status to find and contact their biological father (or "donor dad"). Turns out he is a local named Paul (Mark Ruffalo). Now, Paul is presented as a total modern hottie (and he is!). Paul's a manly man who rides a motorcycle, wears a leather jacket, has a hipster goatee, and owns and runs and organic restaurant. Mark Ruffalo totally works it, I must say. He is HOT.

The kids decide to sneakily meet Paul, behind their moms' backs. Turns out they like him, and heck, he is kind of delighted that these cool kids were a result of an offhand "donation" from his youth. A friendship between hot Donor Dad and his bio-kids forms, and it doesn't take long for Nic and Jules to find out.

The Kids are All Right paints a complex portrait of a modern family. Nic and Jules intentionally did not include the donor in their lives, but here is is now. Though Nic is reluctant and suspicious of the guy, the rest of the family (including hippie-ish Jules) is taken by his charms. Is there room to expand a family simply because of biology? Or will this new addition mess with and potentially break up the family's inter-relationships that they've established over the years?

It is an interesting question, and there are no villains in The Kids Are All Right. Paul isn't an ass but is a bit misguided in his role with the family, Jules is a ding-a-ling but is sweet and a bit unfocused, and Nic is a hard-ass but is really just in mother-bear mode. I don't think it is giving much away to say that Paul works his charms on Jules in more ways than one. "But she is a LESBIAN and he is a MAN!" protest many... "Why does this have to happen when we finally have a movie that doesn't represent gay marriage as anything other than a marriage like any other?" Well, good point. And the more that I've thought about it, it IS kind of an annoying plot point.

But this isn't a movie by and for The Gays. This is a movie written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko who chose to blur the lines of attraction between a couple of her major characters for her plot. Not everything in real life is black and white, so I accept her characters and their flaws. Sure, they effed up, but to err is human, and The Kids are All Right worked for me, showing that nobody is perfect, regardless of their persuasion.