Juggalos. No joke here. I just like saying, “juggalos.” Among the pressing questions the entirely un-family entertainment Family chooses to ask is the following: Are juggalos, the Insane Clown Posse’s insane clown posse of followers, hedonistic psychopaths or uplifting humanitarians? Judging by the film, the answer could be either within a 30-second span; the film had all the consistency of year-old milk, and occasionally reeked of it as well.
Kate (Taylor Schilling) is 33 going on 50. Seriously, when Peter Horton shows up as “dad” late in the film, I thought there’s no way he’s old enough to be her father. Oh, he’s old enough and then some. Peter Horton is a good thirty years older than Taylor Schilling, which is the most disturbing fact I learned today – and I learned today what a juggalo is. Kate is work-obsessed, which is a tragedy because aside from the title and corner office, she really doesn’t seem very good at her job. For one thing, she doesn’t seem to have either a filter or an ounce of tact. She will also get happily trashed at client meetings, which is not only bad form, but a really bad idea from any perspective. Lemme ask this: that gossipy office-type conversation which is supposed to be private, but never is in the movies because of a reveal or poor choice of venue … when a character disparages another to a third party and it turns out the agent of the attack overheard, is that funny? Because that’s the entirety of the office humor in this film.
The lone bit of character integrity Kate seems to have is a brutal honesty, which comes in handy when getting out of responsibilities like taking care of her niece for the week. Turns out her brother and sister-in-law have no other choices, so Kate heaves a disgusted sigh and agrees to caretake middle school Maddie (Bryn Vale, who totally looks like the kid from Heredity, but isn’t) while her folks are away. This is the basic Role Models set-up: an irresponsible and unwilling adult has charge of an impressionable and potentially vulnerable child. It’s a set-up that should never happen in real life, of course, and in this case, probably shouldn’t have happened at the movies, either.
The biggest problem with Family is not that Kate is a big jerk (although it should be), but instead that the arc from uncaring and irresponsible to caring and responsible is less a journey and more a random set of leaps, not unlike a drunken grasshopper making its way across a yard. Most movies are filmed out of sequence; this one seems edited out of sequence. C’mon, Kate, do you care or don’t you? Do you care about Maddie’s diet, social standing, obsession with magic and karate, or would you just down a bottle of wine and call it a night? There’s no consistency to the answer to that question; Family will deliver similar responses at the 10-minute and the 70-minute mark, while completely the opposite five minutes on either side of those milestones. We care about Maddie because she’s being bullied at school, but thanks to Kate and the screenplay, I don’t actually know whether Maddie is supposed to be true to herself or fight back or ignore the whole thing altogether. And where the heck do the juggalos come in?
Right down to the cape, Family is a poor man’s Role Models. Wait. Is that assessment outdated? Should it be “poor woman’s Role Models?” “Poor them’s Role Models?” “Role Models for the economically disadvantaged who cannot afford a better film?” Look, PC is better than non-PC – the latter is just an excuse to bully, but sometimes PC really frustrates me. Anyhoo, you get the point.
Oh, and give Family a Lindsay Lohan “waste of talent” award for the decision to cast Kate McKinnon as Jill, the neighbor who gets in your business.
A Family film not quite legit
This comedy with make you spit
I don’t mean to fuel your frowns
But if fancy you insane clowns
Next time, just hit play for It
Rated R, 85 Minutes
Director: Laura Steinel
Writer: Laura Steinel
Genre: Are you kidding me?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Role Models fans who never saw Role Models
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Kate McKinnon fans
