How Did Zac Efron Go From ‘The Iron Claw’ to This?
It’s been a while since my lovely girlfriend made us watch a movie that I otherwise wouldn’t have let desecrate my eyeballs, but a new Zac Efron movie will always catch her eye, so here we are. A Family Affair was dropped onto Netflix last week to nary a ripple of interest, which at this stage, isn’t anything special. In fact, that Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman could star in a film released last week that you haven’t even heard of only really makes sense when you realise it released on Netflix.
I grabbed onto this film before it sank into the depths of Netflix limbo in the only way I could—by latching onto Zac Efron and refusing to let go. Ever since The Iron Claw, I’m convinced that Zac Efron is a criminally underutilised presence in Hollywood, so naturally I’m intrigued about what he wound up doing next.
The answer, unfortunately, was Ricky Stanicky, followed by A Family Affair.
Big Reputation
When put-upon assistant Zara (Joey King) quits working for entitled superstar actor Chris Cole (Efron), Chris visits Zara’s home in an attempt to make amends, where he accidentally meets Zara’s mother, Brooke (Kidman), with whom he immediately forms an attachment. Someone much smarter than me should attempt to analyse the reasons behind the similarities between A Family Affair and The Idea of You from earlier this year, both of which feature older women falling in love with much younger celebrities.
The trope must be devilishly appealing for some, but neither of these films have worked on any level for me. If you read my review of The Idea of You, you’ll know I wasn’t a fan, but in comparison with A Family Affair, that film was a dazzling and stylish success.
A Family Affair is awful. This isn’t me approaching it as a rom-com hater or anything; it’s just objectively not a good movie. The positives are slim: I enjoyed watching Zac Efron be an asshole. He comes across as genuinely selfish and unlikeable at the beginning of the movie—he even got a few laughs out of me during this time.
His romance with Nicole Kidman is woefully underdeveloped though—the beginnings of it only materialising a full quarter of the way into a movie that has otherwise been preoccupied with Joey King’s character bemoaning the state of her career. If you didn’t know what kind of movie you were getting into, the shift to the romance between her boss and her mother would come across as truly bizarre.
Cougar Town
Despite this, I’m not sure A Family Affair is bizarre enough. To briefly compare it to it’s hotter-older-sister movie, in The Idea of You, Anne Hathaway is a forty-year-old dating a guy in his early twenties, and her daughter is a teenager, leading her to getting bullied by her peers. The taboo nature of the romance creates the tension, but in A Family Affair, Zac Efron is in his mid-thirties. Zara, the daughter, is twenty-four. Brooke claims to be sixteen years older than Chris. Everyone is well and truly an adult.
There’s very little discomfort or thrill in Efron and Kidman’s relationship—they seem well-suited for each other, actually. So, where does the tension come from? Is Kidman thrust into a world of stardom she’s not adapted to? Nope. Do we stay in Zara’s POV as she finds ways to break up her boss and her mother? Nope—after featuring her heavily for the first thirty minutes, the movie relegates her to being a secondary character.
What is the movie about, then? Well, Zara’s friend is having relationship troubles, but Zara is too preoccupied to notice… and Brooke and Chris go on some pleasant dates. And they all spend Christmas together, which goes along without a hitch. Oh, and Kathy Bates is in this movie! She… uh… she… she’s definitely in some scenes…
From the moment Chris starts to act like a better person after meeting Brooke, this movie becomes the narrative equivalent of 200mg of melatonin. There are no stakes, and the end-of-act-two break-up is, essentially, a miscommunication that could’ve been resolved in two seconds if everyone hadn’t been jumping the gun. The movie is either frustrating or boring. It’s over-lit, blandly-framed, and shot like a low-budget T.V. movie which is exactly what this is.
Which, to be clear, is fine. Nothing wrong with enjoying some crappily-made schlock every now and then, but what on earth are Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron doing in it? This is so far beneath them.
Conclusion
Could this have been a good movie? I’m not sure. The premise is just a diluted version of a better movie (not that much better, but not… this…) so there would need to be a deep, page one rewrite to improve things.
But at the end of the day, this movie isn’t striving for anything. It’s not trying to say anything about fame or love or grief or family; it’s just generic scene after generic scene. What’s there to improve in a movie like this?
Junk of this low quality shouldn’t be able to snag acting talent like Kidman and Efron. That we’ve reduced them to this should bring Netflix nothing but shame. Every day I light a candle at my shrine to Christopher Nolan and pray for the streaming bubble to burst.
If it doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to have to find a way to burst it myself. I can’t take much more of this.
***
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