A FAMILY AFFAIR (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

A Family Affair, Netflix

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 28, 2024

A movie of multiple tones and tactics, A Family Affair can't quite decide whose story to tell and how to tell it. That the individual approaches to this material—about an affair between a 50-year-old author and a 30-something movie star, as well as how the writer's daughter reacts to the relationship—work to some degree on their own is worth noting and, in a way, admiring. That the movie feels like a disparate whole because of the filmmakers' indecisiveness is another matter entirely.

It all begins as a fairly obvious but still amusing takedown of Hollywood excess, embodied in actor Chris Cole. Chris is played by Zac Efron in a performance that is partly self-deprecating parody but gradually reveals a sense of lonely isolation and insecurity beneath it, and it's almost as if director Richard LaGravenese and screenwriter Carrie Solomon are counting on their leading man to guide the material through its tonal shifts. If that is the case, they've chosen wisely, if only in that regard, because Efron makes both the broadly comedic elements and the emotional core of this character work.

Of course, the character himself mainly exists as a plot device. At first, he's the boss of Zara (Joey King), the actor's personal assistant, who has to be at the star's beck and call at any and every moment of the day. Chris needs her to buy his groceries, since he fears being hounded by fans and paparazzi any time he's in public. She has to help him with his schedule, which is currently occupied by shooting the next installment in the movie series that made him famous—a superhero franchise that has run out of ideas, if it ever had any, given the new one is a mishmash of action conceits with a studio-ordered Christmas theme shoved in for good measure.

Most uncomfortable of all, Zara must ensure that her boss' romantic break-ups go as well as they can, picking up any personal items he might have left at a former lover's home and having the same pair of diamond earrings ready as a parting gift. Chris is tyrannical in his demanding ways, and after it becomes clear that he has no intention of elevating her career beyond being a glorified gofer, Zara quits. The actor quickly realizes that he's useless without her help and goes to her home to beg, as much as his ego will allow him to, for her return.

Before that moment, though, we also meet Zara's mother Brooke (Nicole Kidman), a successful author who has had a bad case of writer's block since her husband died about a decade prior. She's stuck because Brooke's best writing is personal and she can't yet bring herself to write about the only things that have occupied her life recently—her husband, his death to cancer, raising a teenager as a widow.

Brooke communicates all of this to her mother-in-law and editor Leila (Kathy Bates) in a scene that, after witnessing the ego-driven shenanigans between Zara and Chris, feel as if it belongs in a completely different movie. It's frank and honest, performed by Kidman and Bates as two people who understand loss so well as to be comfortable enough to speak openly and freely about it. Later, there are two other scenes between these characters that get at the heart—the fear and the bliss—of the affair that's about to start between Brooke and Chris, and they're just as considered.

Everything surrounding those scenes, however, is trying to do at least two other distinct things. There's the affair itself, which begins after Chris, desperate to re-hire Zara, and Brooke talk about their lives, have a few too many drinks, and end up in bed together. It's portrayed in some pleasant scenes of the two talking but quickly runs out of steam, leading to a lengthy montage of the two relaxing on a beach and in an ocean-view mansion.

There's no real feeling of passion here, although that's primarily because the affair becomes a justification for a silly plot revolving around Zara that inevitably turns to melodrama. The daughter discovers her mother and the movie star in bed, is horrified, and demands that nothing like that happens again. As the couple sneak around behind Zara's back, she becomes suspicious and, while also helping Chris on set, tries to catch them together again.

Some of the behind-the-scenes stuff is amusing, mainly because of Efron, and while the story eventually has Zara realizing her boss might be sincere about his feelings for a woman for once, it's only a matter of time, really, before some misunderstanding upends everything in a way that an honest conversation or two might fix. That part of the confusion has to do with Zara's own selfishness makes sense, but in the bigger picture, we're suddenly confronted with another story, perspective, and tone again.

Because we know Solomon is capable of giving these characters such discussions and the benefit of not being mere pawns in a romantic-comedy plot, that inevitable turn is more disappointing than anything else. A Family Affair is either funny or thoughtful when it wants to be. It's never both of those qualities at once, though, and with those third-act complications, the end result is a movie that doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products