Review of The Family Fang (2016) by Kapten V — 08 Dec 2016

Wow, weird one, this. For most part it's uninvolving and even sleep-inducing. And I wouldn't say it's put together successfully: too much empty talk and too little character development or concentrating on family dynamics.

But it does raise interesting questions about how or why parents are to blame for shortfalls in their offsprings' later independent life. And the short but quite powerful finale does lift it somewhere higher than before. At least it did for me.

The story is about adult brother and sister (Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman) not enjoying their adult existence and blaming parents for not raising them the proper way. But the latter (Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett) are lifelong controversial performance artists who claim that true art is more important than being like everybody else.

I haven't read the successful 2011's novel by Kevin Wilson the movie is based on but Bateman, also directing, seemed to be struggling with the adaptation.

Movie as a whole is in terrible need for some balancing. The scenes with parents are functional, thanks to evercool Walken. But the story concentrates mostly on adult children who are so devoid of charm or anything remotely interesting that may put me almost to sleep. Think "The Royal Tenenbaums" but without the fun parts or unique voice of Wes Anderson.

I am not sure what is it with Kidman and Bateman. They both can be really cool given some good material but they rarely manage to find something worthwhile. This is not the good project their fans have been looking for.