The Kids Are Not All Right

The Kids Are All Right is another soft centered Hollywood liberal film that pats itself on the back. This time around the patting is because Lisa Cholodenko (an out Lesbian) has made a movie about a nice Lesbian couple played by two straight Hollywood actresses that can and obviously did go down easy in all the Cineplex's. Our Lesbian couple live in a nice clean neighborhood somewhere in southern California where ugly dirty life and politics does not raise its nasty pointy little head, where it seems that they are the only people living in this neighborhood, where the tea party doesn’t exist, nor gay bashing, no gay teen suicides, no Sarah Palin (if only) or anything right wing or dangerous to the lives of gay and lesbians. This is California and no one makes any mention of Prop. 8. I want to live in this place (not really) They also don’t have any gay friends, and their one night out is with a straight married couple. So we have a somewhat butch lesbian (Annette Bening) Living in pretty nice bliss with somewhat femme lesbian (Julianne Moore) and their two kids a girl and a boy, each one belonging to a different mom and both artificial inseminated by the same sperm donor who comes on to the scene because the boy age 15 is curious to know who his “dad” is. So behind their moms back the 18 year old girl does a search and comes up with sensitive stud bunny Mark Ruffalo who drives a motorcycle and owns an all natural ( a little dig here, he’s the natural or normal one) restaurant. Well the kids are your typical teens they argue with their two moms, but seem very well adjusted to this unusual household, they seem to have accepting friends, although the boys best friend is a nasty piece of work, and the girl’s two best friend is an oversexed little tart and an undersexed pretty boy. What gives? There is lots of things in this film that I found somewhat or very offensive, like the message that the filmmaker sends out to the audience when the two gals think son is or might be gay because he‘s hanging out too much with his offensive friend. The kid gets angry that they would even think this of him, after all he loves all kinds of sports. “I’m not gay” he hurtfully says to them, of course you aren’t the two chirp in. So here we have two lesbians giving out a message that no it isn’t ok to be gay, and we are so happy that you’re not. This scene really bothered me. Wait there’s more. Ruffalo who is screwing every woman in sight gets all hot over Julianne Moore, and boom their having a couple of hot sex scenes behind Bening’s back. Of course this set up just reinforces what homophobic straight men all across the country (and the world think) that Lesbians just need a good screw from a guy to set them on the straight and narrow road. The one sex scene between the two women who get off while watching gay male porn is circumspect and literally under the covers, whereas the sex scenes with Ruffalo are nude, hot and explicit. This is a severely disjointed piece of fluff geared as I said to all the bleeding heart liberals out there, and as far as I’m concerned does more harm than good. If you want to see a real and honest messy portrait of lesbian love and relationships I suggest you see Cholodenko’s excellent film “High Art” that has superb performances by Ally Sheedy & Patricia Clarkson, and skip this Hollywood dribble.