The Kids Are All Right - Cinema Review

'director Lisa Cholodenko has mixed indie-flavoured youth with indie-flavoured experience and come out smelling largely of indie-flavoured roses'

A modern family drama creating decent amounts of Oscar buzz at the moment, The Kids Are All Right aspires higher than its rather formulaic script thanks to a sterling set of performances from its five central actors. In pulling together Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson, director Lisa Cholodenko has mixed indie-flavoured youth with indie-flavoured experience and come out smelling largely of indie-flavoured roses.

It's unfair to pick a highlight from what comes close to being a true ensemble but few stars are rising higher than Mark Ruffalo's at the moment and here the soon-to-be Bruce Banner proves he can do just about anything. Most articles describe Ruffalo's Paul as being a 'restauranteur' but the truth is much more exotic. Paul is a slowly ageing hippie; the type of laid-back, East-coast, chino-wearing gent who says things like 'right on' and who dropped out of college because he wanted to 'do things'. In another actor's hands Paul could be terrifically twee and unconvincing but Ruffalo makes him charming, affable and believable. Paul is completely different to, say, Dave Toschi in Zodiac or in his small but brilliant role in Where the Wild Things Are and he marks Ruffalo out as a proper dramatic actor, able and willing to slip into a plethora of different personae.

If Ruffalo is the dynamic heart of the film then it's a shame then the script can't bend with him. It's true that there aren't many Hollywood films out there which feature a homosexual marriage as their main relationship, or artificial insemination as their MacGuffin, but put those things aside and what you've got is a bog-standard family drama. Cholodenko does all the basics well but it's only the basics that are on show here; standard arguments and conflicts arise as change approaches the happy family nucleus in the shape of both Paul and the impending departure of Joni (Wasikowska) to college. Whilst every character remains fairly unpredictable in the hands of great players, the story remains anything but and I for one found it difficult to fall in love with something which increasingly felt like it was merely going through the motions.

That said, Cholodenko deserves massive applause for some constituent parts of her central message. The kids being 'Right' is a generally important theme throughout and in a time when we've had necessary but downhearted offerings such as Harry Brown and Eden Lake, a bit of optimism directed towards the youth of today is both welcome and well executed. Joni and Laser (Hutcherson) aren't always right but they're generally close enough and seeing them learn from life's little trials is one of the films absolute joys.

Formulaic and flawed but equally warm and featuring some sparkling performances, The Kids Are All Right is a showcase for what great acting can do for a mediocre script.

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The Incredible Suit's cliché detector goes into overdrive as he calls The Kids Are All Right 'funny and touching'.