Something odd and new and very agreeable happened yesterday. As I was cleaning up after dinner, thinking about Friends With Kids in the feeling way that movies that get to you leave you with, I understood that the life that I’m leading is every bit as chic, amusing and romantic as the lives of the characters in that romantic comedy set in New York City. And probably a bit more sophisticated. The movie stars’ glamour had bowled me over, as it always does. (What would Jon Hamm look life if he were sitting here thinking my thoughts and trying to decide whether to continue the struggle with prose or to go boil a couple of eggs? Would Jennifer Westfeldt even talk to me?) But I felt no envy. I did not want to trade in my familiar apartment for their art-directed abodes. I would be happy to stay put. And I’ve no doubt in the world that I owe this enlightened tranquillity to the same thing that unites the screwball couple in Friends With Kids: a little boy. In my case, a grandson.

When people, such as Jennifer Westfeldt — the writer and director of Friends With Kids — says that she doesn’t feel the “urge” to have children, I want to bang her on the head and ask her how she thinks she’s going to have grandchildren otherwise? This is a transformation of the complaint that young people get from their parents about “giving us grandchildren.” Forget about giving your parents grandchildren. You should be thinking about giving yourself grandchildren.

*** 

The movie’s title, as well as its ad campaign, suggest an ensemble piece in the tradition of The Big Chill. But Friends With Kids is something else altogether: a screwball comedy with children. Other recent examples of the genre are The Switch and Life As We Know It. The basic screwball formula calls for a couple of romantic leads who, for one reason or another, don’t see themselves as a couple. They’re eventually roused from this delusion (but not at the same time) by the squirmy jealousy that each of them feels when confronted by the sight of the other in the amorous arms of a third party. The new wrinkle is a magical effect attributed to children: children, by making their minders realize What’s Important In Life, open their eyes to the virtue and attractiveness of their partners in child-rearing. The magic is paradoxical, because children also wear you down so badly that you live like a subsistence farmer. In this regard, they play the role of Hitting Bottom in addiction narratives.

Friends With Kids varies the formula by eliding the wearing-down part. The lead couple’s friends have children who wear them down, but little Joe, the darling baby boy(played by uncredited actors) parented by best friends Julie (Ms Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott), is an angel who never causes the slightest inconvenience. Julie and Jason go right on with their well-appointed, tidy lives; stray toys do not litter their living rooms. This fantasy is palpable during the film, but it doesn’t get in the way, because the movie has an altogether different point to make. Friends With Kids isn’t a film about a couple of bright thirtysomethings who think that it would be great to have a kid (before it’s too late), only to find out (too late) that children can bring an apocalyptic end to life as we know it. This is a film about a couple of bright thirtysomethings who think that it would be great to have a kid without the grown-up mess of lapsed personal hygeine and moribund sex lives. Julie and Jason, observing their friends, conclude that kids can’t wreck the romance if the romance hasn’t produced the kids. So they’ll have their baby and share responsibility and continue the hunt for a soul-mate. Which turns out to be brilliant, because they would never have found one another otherwise.

Despite its glossy finish, Friends With Kids is not slick. The comedy is made to digest an enormous amount of discomfort. Two of the friends, the couple played by Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm, begin to fall apart almost immediately, and not attractively; Ms Wiig takes on an embalmed expression in her first scene as a new parent. Two other friends, the couple played by Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd, are reduced to a semi-slovenliness that does not go unnoticed by either. Julie and Jason, for all their kempt self-possession, worry greatly about finding love, and they do so on a quiet back-channel that has nothing to do with the much-discussed problem of finding a lover. The sweetness of the film’s production values (the appealing actors, the chic settings) coats a good deal of quiet bitterness. When everyone gathers at a Vermont ski resort for a weekend of fun (and for the pleasure of getting to know Julie’s and Jason’s significant others, played by Ed Burns and Megan Fox), the good times are irreparably soured when Mr Hamm’s character takes his marital frustrations out on his friends. The realism of this scene, with its madly self-destructive surge, is almost unwatchable.

There’s only one inexplicable moment in Friends With Kids. Julie’s mother (Lee Bryant) comes to babysit. Holding Joe in her arms, she tells her daughter that she ought to be asked to do this more often. Julie says, hesitantly, “I didn’t know you felt that way.” What planet? What planet?

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2012 at 8:59 am.