Friends with Kids

Are we making a statement about parenting or not? Do you think people ever sit down and ponder, “hmmm, do I make art or amiable schlock? Art? Schlock? Art? Schlock?” Friends with Kids ventured the sea of Artistic Vision, billowed the sails in the rough waters of Controversy and Counter-intuition and then coasted alee into the safe confines of Schlock Bay. But hey, it’s an OK place to be. All hotels there are two-and-a-half-stars.

Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) are friends. Good friends. The kind of friends who call one another while they are in bed with other people. Yes, every modern romance still owes something to When Harry Met Sally. Resigned to a platonic relationship despite their obvious compatibility, the two become a default couple in their adult sextet. It works, sort of. Then the married people start having kids and we get the comic day/night of how parenting has ruined their lives. I don’t quite know whether to laugh out loud here or ponder exactly how the director feels about children herself. Jennifer and Jason evaluate the situation and come to a conclusion that only drunk people would reach – the “having a child” wasn’t the mistake, it was “being married while having the child” where their friends erred. If you just have a child, you see, the romance or potential romance with foreign partners can remain in tact, unsullied by the relationship you have with your baby.

I’ll let you chew on that a moment.

This is what friends decide, right? Wouldn’t life be PERFECT if we just had a child? I must consider that thought forty times a day with platonic on-line friends and ice-hockey teammates alike. Oh drat, I’m married; it won’t work. Shame, such a good idea. Now this is a movie, so naturally Jennifer and Jason take the plunge, have a child, and split custody and parenting down the middle. And there is humor in the venture – Jason in delivery room vehemently opposing the episiotomy (“she’s gotta be back on the market in six weeks!”) is one I shan’t forget for a while. It is a good thing my own wife and I have decided we’re good with our present child situation, because I’m not sure I couldn’t stop myself repeating that line at a most appropriate/inappropriate time.

And the gambit works. Well, for a time. This is where the story works, too. Here, we have introduced an entirely new way of child rearing – it’s like divorce except the parents started out separated and remain close. My question now is, well, why shouldn’t it work? Oh, I’m a firm believer in a two-parent household, but beyond that, what makes one situation necessarily better than another? The fact that the parents sleep in the same bed? Access to both parents at the same time? How is this different than a household where a parent travels a lot? Or where one works a night shift while the other a day? If they get along and make a commitment to the child, what does it matter they keep separate residences eight floors apart? I like this set-up far more than divorced parents or parents who fight constantly.

But it was a universally acknowledged bad idea, so we have to run it down. Boo. Jennifer and Jason inevitably both take new people and discover they’d rather be the other of significance to each other. And, naturally, their arrangement disintegrates. Again, why?

Writer/director/star/anesthesiologist Jennifer Westfeldt makes a fairly amiable script; it’s a shame it doesn’t really resonate. For instance, she believes that given freedom, all men choose the alpha male path. Is this what happens when you live for years with (co-star) Jon Hamm? Yeah, I could see that. There’s also weird conversational segues, like when Alex (Chris O’Dowd) offers without shame or self awareness his own masturbation habits involving pictures of Jason’s girlfriend. In mixed company. With his wife present. Yeah, it’s funny and it has a place. Thumbs up, Jennifer. It’s also monstrously unrealistic. Thumbs down, Jennifer.

You’ve got me interested, Ms. Westfeldt. I want to see your next film; I’d also encourage you to have co-star Kristen Wiig help write it. It was nice to see Hamm,Wiig, O’Dowd and Maya Rudolph together again, btw, even if there wasn’t explosive diarrhea this time around.

Rated R, 107 Minutes
D: Jennifer Westfeldt
W: Jennifer Westfeldt
Genre: Modern family
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Counter-culturists, in theory
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Traditionalists, in theory