A Family Affair

Following The Idea of You, there seems to be a growing market for films about middle-aged women dating significantly younger men. A Family Affair will face inevitable comparisons to that film. In both, the man is a celebrity, and the woman, divorced or widowed and looking at least ten years younger than her age, is on the verge of giving up on love for good. In both films, the woman's love affair is complicated by her role as a mother. Affair is less focused on the sexual attraction (only one real sex scene) and, smartly, more on the interesting emotional triangle between Efron, Kidman, and Kidman's late-bloomer daughter, played by Joey King.

King is the film's highlight. She's a natural comedian, and she and Efron have more chemistry as boss and beleaguered employee than Efron and Kidman do as a couple. Efron is also eminently believable as the entitled celebrity who thinks #metoo indicates agreement and frets over his Tibetan-cloth t-shirts. Kidman's best scenes come in her authentic dialogues about life, love, and parenthood with Bates, playing her mother-in-law. It may be that Kidman is too mature an actress for a devil-may-care-fling film. Not too old for an affair, just too wise for the character she's meant to be playing here. Here's a twist: Why not have Kidman and Hathaway fall for men who are already their equals?