We’ve known Netflix long enough to know that the ranking of the most viewed titles that the platform sponsors doesn’t always correspond to the most beautiful ones, and yet A Family Affair seemed different. Reading the plot and, above all, seeing the actors involved, we were sure that it could have been a light and purely summer comedy along the lines of The idea of youthe film by Prime with Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine that represented not only the love between a star and an ordinary person as in Notting Hillbut also a significant age difference between the parties involved. Also A Family Affair plays on these two main axes but, unfortunately for him, with very different results: more sad and banal. The plot is very simple: a very muscular and temperamental Hollywood star played by Zac Efron enjoys making life miserable for his poor twenty-four year old assistant played by Joey Kingwho two years earlier had agreed to work with him with the promise of becoming his producer. His umpteenth impulsive move leads the girl, who in the stage fiction is called Zara, to resign and take her life back into her own hands: the star understands that he has made a mistake and goes to Zara’s house to convince her to come back.
It is there, however, that he meets and becomes familiar with Brooke, Zara’s writer mother played by Nicole Kidman: the time of a glass of liquor and the two end up in bed just a moment before the girl finds them together and is shocked enough. Now: leaving aside the speed with which the main plot of the film is shown, the most disappointing thing is to see a certain hastiness not only in the action but also in the writing. A Family Affair in fact, it rests on an immature screenplay that asks the viewer to make an abnormal effort to consider what happens on the scene as credible. The difference with The Idea of You Here’s the thing: while Prime’s film tried hard to play on verisimilitude – as believable as it might be that a woman accompanying her daughter to a music festival would mistake a star’s trailer for a public bathroom – A Family Affair plays on the level of unreality and, if we may say so, also of stereotype.
The other thing that doesn’t work is above all the lack of synergy between Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, who had already worked together at the time of The Paperboy. We would like to say that the theme alone is enough – that of the age difference that is stupidly stigmatized even today – to guarantee the solidity of a product, but that is not the case. A film, to work, needs not only a screenplay solid enough to support the entire structure but, above all, a heart and a warmth that unfortunately A Family Affair he has not demonstrated that he possesses. Everything is too fast, far-fetched, forced and stereotypical to be taken seriously: it’s okay that it’s summer and we’re watching a comedy, but why should we settle for a product that isn’t up to par when America has made comedies its forte? The film directed by Richard LaGravenesewhat he wrote The Legend of the Fisher Kingunfortunately, did not convince us. And it’s a shame because, with such a cast and with the means made available by Netflix, the film could have become a pleasant surprise.
