Review: Friends with Kids

Lionsgate

It’s a shame that when Jennifer Westfeldt went to write this movie she didn’t bother to learn what it was about.  Friends with Kids attempts to explore the changes that occur in adult relationships when kids enter the scene, but there’s little authenticity to the situations Westfeldt creates; it’s like she assumes that once married people have children, their lives go to hell, and that’s all we need to know.   But, the story tells us, if you have kids without getting married - joint custody between friends - then everything is fine and you are miraculously able to manage your new family life with little disruption to the freewheeling single existence you haven’t had to leave behind.
  
This is just dumb.


But Westfeldt is determined to press her point, so she gives us a married couple with three year old and a baby – a pair pretty well settled into family life - who can’t manage a simple dinner party with old friends.  But the unmarried duo who have just given birth pull off a lovely little brunch because, apparently, single parents who are just friends don’t have fussy babies, or babies who cry, or need their diapers changed.  And, it seems, those babies sleep through the night, allowing their platonic parents to wake up refreshed, have time for showers, maintain perfectly pressed wardrobes, and consequently, pull together a tasteful Sunday brunch with time to spare. (I would suggest though, that if you are hosting a three year old at your chic Manhattan apartment you might be wise not to leave a crystal platter full of treats on a low table. It seems an obvious point, but not one Westfeldt wants to acknowledge, because if the three year old had climbed the low table, grabbed handfuls of sweets and crashed the platter to the floor, well, that would mean that the unmarried parents were as clueless as new parents generally are, and that kind of reality never makes it into this story line.)


Written, directed and starring Jennifer Westfeldt; she is consistently upstaged by her leading man co-star Adam Scott.  Cast also includes Maya Rudolph, Chris O’Dowd, Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm – the last two are criminally underused (does Westfeldt not know that Wiig is a comedian?); if you are thinking of seeing this film because Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm are in it, you are wasting your time.  C


  
  

John Carter, Silent House, and Eddie Murphy

Open Road Films

Big openings this weekend are John Carter, Silent House, and One Thousand Words.  Big holdover is The Lorax. 

So what’s the deal?  John Carter is a Disney movie starring Taylor Kitsch, the good looking bad boy from "Friday Night Lights".  He plays a Confederate soldier who gets transported to Mars and becomes a hero to the locals.  It’s based on a novel written in 1912 by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of "Tarzan and the Apes," but that came later.    Disney has high hopes for the film but the critics are lukewarm, although many say the visuals are wonderful and the plotline strange and entertaining; the rest were bored.  Thursday’s midnight ticket sales were just so so.


Silent House is a horror movie starring Elizabeth Olsen, a fabulous young actress who deserves to make some money. Word is that she does well here but the film disappoints, especially in the final scenes; early scares are pretty good.  In A Thousand Words Eddie Murphy plays a fast talking literary agent who gets his comeuppance when some kind of Zen curse threatens to strike him dead once he has spoken 1000 words.  So, Murphy has to do a lot of silent mugging – this from a funny man whose greatest gift is his comic delivery and ability to mimic voices.  The film sat collecting dust for four years, seems like it was too soon to take it off the shelf.  But the elephant in the room is The Lorax, which after its remarkable $70 million opening weekend looks primed to knock all the newcomers out of competition.  To sum up: slow weekend at the movies, at least for new releases. There are some holdovers still playing wide: if you want some action, try Safe House; if you’re after romance, look for The Vow, and if the Oscars are still on your mind, you can probably find The Artist playing at a theater near you.