Among the many perennial causes we go to the flicks is the onscreen warmth between impossibly charismatic stars. The summer season of 2024 has delivered the products in that division to this point: Take into account the sweltering Anne Hathaway-Nicholas Galitzine romance “The Idea Of You,” the disarming, post-Barbenheimer pairing of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in “The Fall Guy,” Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist’s scorching triangle in “Challengers,” or “Hit Man” turning Glen Powell and Adria Arjona into keen bedfellows. On paper, Richard LaGravenese’s “A Family Affair” has each ingredient to hitch this elite listing. Sadly, the movie performs extra like an artless quickie than a totally fleshed-out romance.
It’s a thriller how little chemistry there may be to be discovered right here between Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, two of Hollywood’s most magnetic stars. In actual fact, their courtship and attraction unfold so ineptly all through LaGravenese’s modern romantic comedy that one can’t assist however miss the duo’s earlier collaboration, Lee Daniels’ 2012 campfest “The Paperboy,” which packed extra steam even in its throwaway moments than “A Family Affair” manages in its key intimate scenes.
Written by debuting scribe Carrie Solomon, this messy movie tells a multigenerational story, with Joey King main proceedings as Zara Ford, a twenty-something Tinseltown resident with large goals of changing into a significant movie producer. For now, like most early-career showbiz hopefuls, she’s caught in a lowly assistant job. Her boss? Famous person Hollywood heartthrob Chris Cole (an uncharacteristically indifferent Efron), for whom she appears to do the whole lot: choose up his dry cleansing, go on grocery runs, advise him on screenplays, rush costly breakup items to his a number of soon-to-be-ex-girlfriends to forestall a scene, and so forth. Not solely does the job looks as if a 24/7 gig, it additionally isn’t creatively rewarding. For starters, Zara doesn’t approve of Chris’s high-concept initiatives — “Die Hard” meets “Miracle on 34th Street” meets “Speed,” for instance — and she or he is so over his skilled insecurities. If solely he would simply hearken to her instincts.
On the plus aspect, Zara has loving assist from her mom Brooke (Kidman), a well-known author, at whose palatial property she nonetheless lives expense-free. However she’s sad, even offended, as she feels she is prepared for the subsequent step in her profession — whether or not as an affiliate producer, or working Chris’s firm after solely a few years of labor as an assistant. (Children lately.) For some time, nobody — not even her spirited greatest buddy Genie (Liza Koshy) — challenges Zara’s privileged worldview, at the least till her self-centered private {and professional} freakouts change into an excessive amount of to tolerate.
What units off Zara’s downward spiral is her job resignation, and the spontaneous romance that sparks between Chris and Brooke — the previous, a lonely man worshipped however not understood by thousands and thousands, the latter, jadedly single for the reason that dying of Zara’s dad greater than a decade in the past. Seemingly appearing out of protecting instincts for her mom — in any case, she’s seen what a despicable womanizer Chris could be — Zara complains continually that her mother is relationship her ex-boss, dismissing each Brooke and Genie of their respective wants from her. Brooke fortunately finds the encouragement she doesn’t get from her daughter by way of a stunning relationship along with her legendary editor Leila (Kathy Bates, effortlessly grounding the movie), who additionally occurs to be her mother-in-law.
In charting the rising closeness of Chris and Brooke, LaGravenese’s route is oddly inflexible and uninteresting. Throughout the magical studio tons they stroll by way of and the non-public meals they’ve away from prying eyes, you virtually beg the movie to loosen up just a little and let the attractive leads organically chill out into its rhythm. As an alternative, “A Family Affair” insists on staccato beats and artificial visuals. It’s shocking that famed Robert Zemeckis collaborator Don Burgess is behind the movie’s shallow, one-note cinematography. Certainly, “A Family Affair” seems to be so lifeless that you just ponder whether it’s being purposely uncinematic, out to satisfy the prophecy of the catch-all phrase “content.”
The manufacturing design additionally leaves quite a bit to be desired: Whereas Brooke’s idyllic house (the cryptic location of which so doesn’t seem like L.A., by the best way) is meant to present off a lived-in Nancy Myers vibe with its fancy kitchen and serenely furnished dwelling areas, it seems to be like a showroom at greatest. Identical goes for the Hallmark-card mountain lodge the place the movie’s fundamental quartet spends Christmas. You’ve in all probability seen sitcoms with extra genuine interiors.
Ultimately, the whole lot falls into place a lot as one would count on. Friendships are restored (although poor Genie nonetheless will get the quick finish of the stick), love finds a method, and careers take off. A number of the movie’s inside-baseball jokes a few city obsessive about soulless sequels and multiverses fortuitously land. However the largest joke appears to be on “A Family Affair” itself, for losing Efron’s underrated skills and Kidman’s peerless vary so clumsily.
