CRITIQUE – The star histrionics in a smooth romantic comedy where her widowed character falls in love with a hunky actor twenty years her junior.
Even Nicole Kidman needs to have fun from time to time. And hides, like the common man, a girlie’s heart. After a slew of heavy drama series (Expats, Special Ops : Lioness), make way for laughter with The Underside of the Family. This funny and unpretentious romantic comedy, which is a little too much like a Christmas TV movie (snow and fir trees included), joins the ranks of generic, immediately consumable and forgettable entertainment, which Netflix has made a specialty of.
At the star of red Mill plays Brooke, a novelist who begins an affair with a capricious actor twenty years her junior, Chris Cole (Zac Efron), hero of the franchise Rentlow-grade pastiche of The lethal Weapon. Worse, the handsome guy is also the tyrannical employer of his daughter (Joey King, On the wings of luck).
In addition to having to manage the media repercussions of this love at first sight, Zara, who despite herself plays the chaperone, is worried about seeing her playboy boss break the heart of her father. How many times, as an assistant, forced to work and humiliated at will, has she been responsible for buying the Cartier diamond earrings that Chris gives to his conquests when he leaves them? And the young woman, who dreams of becoming a producer, wonders what her mother, a widow and Pulitzer Prize winner, sees in this uncultivated mountain of muscles, who insists on celebrating her dogs’ birthdays twice a year and is not he doesn’t want to open a book on Greek mythology to learn about the character who made him a star.
In the era of time
It helps that Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron have already co-starred and flirted onscreen in the thriller. Paperboyby Lee Daniels, a decade ago. Chris Cole’s transformation from egomaniac to Prince Charming remains superficial and mystifying. Romcom veteran Richard LaGravenese’s (PS : I Love You) is more bitchy and crude in mother-daughter relationships. Between jealousy and nostalgia, Zara struggles to accept a new man in her mother’s arms and to hear unpleasant truths about her deceased father. The young woman, clumsy and extroverted, like many of her fellow Generation Zers, is looking for her place in life and struggling to cut the cord.
Through Zara, who bumps into door frames and climbs over porticos, Richard LaGravenese plays the card of burlesque and situational comedy. His other great find is the complicity between Brooke and her mother-in-law and editor. She encourages her daughter-in-law not to live in the shadow of her deceased son and to give free rein to her cougar instincts. Kathy Bates (Titanic) plays with relish this voice of temptation.
Perfectly in tune with the times, The Underside of the Family questions, in the wake of The idea of being with you (Prime Video), with Anne Hathaway, our prejudices when a large age gap exists between partners. And that the young lovebirds are the man, and not the woman. But the moral remains the same: Cupid strikes at any moment. It’s never too late to be reborn into the world!
