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