A Family Affair streams on Netflix beginning Friday, June 28.
When we’re introduced to the protagonist of Netflix's latest romantic comedy offering, A Family Affair, she’s fighting LA traffic to deliver a set of "break up" earrings to her boss-from-hell. Zara Ford (Joey King) is an exasperated 24-year-old assistant working for Chris Cole (Zac Efron), a movie star known mostly for mediocre action films. There’s a level of authenticity to the celebrity self-absorption and workplace inappropriateness on display here that can only come from someone who’s done her time in the industry trenches; sure enough, the premise took root during screenwriter Carrie Solomon’s own stint as an assistant. Chris emotionally manipulates Zara and dangles a promotion over her head in order to get her to do his demeaning and demoralizing bidding; she sticks around because the job might be the quickest route to becoming a Hollywood producer. Their relationship is the source of big laughs – but more importantly, it leads to A Family Affair’s big rom-com twist, when Chris gets hot and heavy with Zara’s widowed mother, Brooke (Nicole Kidman).
Unfortunately, even with a seasoned veteran of the genre in the director’s chair (The Last Five Years’ Richard LaGravenese), A Family Affair fails to ignite much passion. When Kidman and Efron played a May-December pairing in 2012's The Paperboy, their sexual chemistry oozed off the screen. Twelve years later, their onscreen reunion is flat, bland, and barely raises the romantic temperature. For some reason, extremely attractive, intelligent, and illustrious writer Brooke hasn’t dated in the 10 years since her husband died. This makes her motivation to bump uglies with her daughter's himbo boss after a few tequila shots pretty understandable. (Go, girl. Get some action!) But beyond scratching that sexual itch, what Brooke sees in Chris is hard to comprehend, because Solomon’s script doesn't tell us.
What it does provide are clichéd lines like "don't break my heart" and "he's more than you think he is," plus a beach getaway montage in lieu of any compelling plot points that might depict any deepening affection. Chris is a man who has made Brooke's daughter's life miserable for the last two years. His only redeeming qualities seem to be his hard body and the fact that he used to wait tables. The closest Efron is given to any sort of character development is a brief mention of childhood grief meant to explain Chris’ awful behavior. Why does A Family Affair want us to root for this guy again?
The film's funniest moments stem from Chris and Zara’s love-hate dynamic; at one point, Zara amusingly uses the language barrier between Chris and the French director of his "Die Hard meets Miracle on 34th Street" blockbuster to call out his dating etiquette. Chris' out-of-touch complaints about how much his life costs, the mishandling of an expensive shahtoosh T-shirt ("it's one of a kind. I only have two!"), and his refusal to play a "blind alcoholic" because "it goes against my iconography" inspire a few chuckles, too. To King's credit, she brings an endearing charm, goofiness and liveliness to the slightly neurotic Zara.
But LaGravenese struggles to bring out the absurdity of the stakes for his three central characters. And Solomon's script, for all of its insider perspective, is too thin and frothy to deliver a substantial or satisfying commentary on how these competing romantic, familial, and professional relationships intersect between the trio. The screenplay throws in two token bffs of color – Stella (Sherry Cola) and Eugenie (Liza Koshy) – to be the Gen Z voices of reason. Yes, Zara is right to be weirded out by the romance and her script notes are valid, but the movie-within-the-movie and Stella's work as an indie playwright don’t add anything. Eugenie's character arc is likewise flimsy and designed solely for Zara to confront her self-involved tendencies when she fails to recognise her pal's relationship woes – but it's bizarre that she’s the only character really held accountable for her toxic traits.
At least Solomon throws in some intriguing threads for Brooke. Once her illicit romance with Chris is revealed, an argument with Zara signals a mother-daughter tension not just about Brooke's intimidating success but also their shared mourning for a husband and father. King and Kidman have a natural rapport that grounds the more dramatic, emotionally wrought elements of A Family Affair. A later conversation with Brooke's mother-in-law (breezily played by Kathy Bates) introduces another relatable theme about how career success and failure can doom a relationship – but these concerns go inexplicably unexplored with her current, egotistical beau. Instead, they're skimmed over in favor of a Hollywood ending that feels far too easy and never truly earned.
