Capsule Review: A Family Affair (2024) – Joey King Steals the Show in Netflix’s Cliché But Entertaining Rom-Com
It’s May-December romance again in A Family Affair, nearly two months after Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine-starred age-gap rom-com The Idea of You. Here, we have an on-screen romance between Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron (they are 20 years apart in real-life), reunited after they last seen in The Paperboy in 2012.
It all started when the famous Icarus Rush action-movie franchise star Chris Cole (Zac Efron) stopping by at Zara’s (Joey King) home. Zara used to be Chris’s personal assistant, who had enough with his snobbish attitude. She has no problem catering to his demands from doing grocery shopping to buying expensive diamond earrings as “breakup” gifts whenever Chris is about to dump his girlfriends. That’s because he promised her an associate producer’s title one day at his company. But that dream job she’s been longing for remains a pipe dream. Chris doesn’t think she’s qualified enough, which among other things that finally triggers her to quit her job.
Back to the part where Chris arriving at Zara’s home, he realises she’s nowhere in sight except her mum, Brooke (Nicole Kidman) doing her household chore. She’s an attractive widowed mother and also happens to be a well-known writer. And the first time she and Chris lay eyes on each other, well, you know what’s going to happen next.
It’s hardly a spoiler territory they end up having sex (it’s in the trailer anyway) and unlucky for Zara, she comes back home at the wrong timing and witnesses the whole thing. One thing that I notice about this movie is Don Burgess’s surprisingly flat and bright cinematography straight out of a Lifetime/Hallmark movie. I get that A Family Affair is made for the small screen under the Netflix’s distribution banner. But it looks odd resulting in such a visual look. Carrie Solomon’s debut screenplay, in the meantime, sticks to the usual rom-com formula, offering nothing new or the kind that would subvert one’s expectations.
Fortunately, Richard LaGravenese, returning to the director’s chair for the first time in a decade since 2014’s The Last Five Years, manages to bring out the best in his three principal stars. It’s a good thing he gives his actors ample room to have fun with their roles. Despite their decades-long age gap, Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman display wonderful chemistry as a couple. But it was Joey King who steals the show as the frustrating and put-upon Zara. The way she gets easily irritated, coupled with her excellent comic timing (the slapstick scene where she is shocked to find her mum having sex with her ex-boss quickly comes to mind) and watching her squabbling with Efron’s Chris Cole, credits to King for bringing her character to vivid life.
There’s a sense of poignancy amid the rom-com tropes involving Zara’s remorse over her unsuspecting selfish nature in the second half of the movie. The otherwise cliché story also effectively delves into Brooke’s arc on how she deserves to be happy after being a single mother for so long since her husband’s death. Not to mention the family dynamics that Kidman and King share their scenes together as mother and daughter. Kathy Bates, who appears as Zara’s grandmother, deserves equal mention as the affable Leila.
A Family Affair is currently streaming on Netflix.
