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Sparkle (2)
I've been spending the weekend catching up on the Oscar movies I haven't seen -- and with a whopping TEN Best Picture nominees, and a sixteen month old baby at home, that is proving to be a SERIOUS challenge this year. One of the movies on my list? The Kids Are All Right (praise be to screeners) which I've heard pretty much nothing but accolades for. Until I read this review from C.L. Minou over at Tiger Beatdown:
...So while I’m glad that a lesbian domestic comedy was made by a lesbian woman, it remains a sad commentary that the only way to get the movie made involved not having any lesbians in it. And maybe a bit ironic.
Because the central message of The Kids Are All Right seems to be one of normalization, perhaps an artistic extension of Harvey Milk’s dictum that “if they know us, they don’t vote against us,” a docu-drama argument against Proposition 8′s absurd premise that gay love is drastically different than straight love. Actually, argues Cholodenko in the movie, it’s just the opposite: they’re both fucked up in largely the same ways. Joni accuses her mother of using her to prove that a lesbian family can raise a child just as well as a straight family, and maybe she has, but not the way Joni is thinking of it. Nic has just as tangled a relationship with her teenaged children as any straight parent does, and about the same issues: Control, autonomy, respect, and the horrid fear that both of you are turning into your mothers.
Read the rest of the review at Tiger Beatdown -- Minou raises some interesting points in her review, that I hadn't considered. But I don't think that takes away from the performances given by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. Or, y'know...the performances I've HEARD they gave. Hopefully I'll be able to weigh in tomorrow.
Have you seen the movie? What did you think?
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Morgan (The818) is a blogger and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. She overshares her personal life - complete with curse words - at The818.com, talks art and design over at Cargoh.com, and tweets: @the818.
