Review of The Family Fang (2016) by Jluis_001 — 06 Feb 2018

For me, The Family Fang is an honest surprise, I'll admit that the genre of dysfunctional families is too tired but this film is a powerful portrait of a family tortured by the ''art'' aspirations of the family patriarch and how his legacy inevitably affect their children.

The Family Fang is Jason Bateman second film as as filmmaker and he really shows a real strength in his work and vision by creating a not too deep but intelligently structured movie, which is based on an novel with the same title that tells the story of two brothers, Bateman and Nicole Kidman, two adults who struggle in their daily lives for the way they were raised by their parents.

Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Jason Bateman) are somewhat estranged from their parents, this due to the ''pain'' they caused them as they were growing up. His parents are a famous artists of New York. They are Caleb (Christopher Walken) and Camille Fang (Maryann Plunkett), who made several performances using their children to create them and execute them.

It is true that it wasn't the best method of raising two kids, after all their parents were really negligent in using their children to cement their reputation in art and especially to involve them in their actions knowing well that they did not understand it completely. Currently Annie is an actress with some notoriety yet she remains insecure about her career while her brother has been unable to finish his new novel. After a small accident, Baxter ends up in the hospital which involves an unwanted and unplanned family reunion.

This is where the film takes an unusual tack in these dramas and engages in darker areas, because after some discussion between them - where we can observe and know them a little more especially Caleb who isn't really nice to his children - the parents of Annie and Baxter disappear, the circumstances are disturbing but Annie is convinced that this is a manipulative deceit, but Baxter has doubts and therefore both begin to investigate the new mystery of their parents, something that will take them on the road of what might have been of them and who they really are.

Bateman builds a nice and entertaining movie, really soon you're hooked and you really will want to know the outcome of the story. His producction team does a good job especially in the editing which manage to keep a good pace. The score is also quite nice and works well with the images on the screen.

The work of the performers is good, especially Nicole Kidman who does a pretty good job without doing an extra effort. She plays a woman who is resentful towards her parents and protective towards her brother, she is actually the only one who goes through the more emotional backlash but the actress is really good at it. Bateman is also ok but he does not try anything different from what we know. Christopher Walken does the same, he spends little time on screen but he leaves his mark.

Funny, comic and dark in equal parts, The Family Fang is a pleasant surprise and a really interesting film.