The Kids Are All Right has a cool title. All right as in a concession to the fact that children come first and are always right? All right as in they turned out okay? All right as in all from the right wing, conservative camp?
Lisa Cholodenko's film is a gently humourous melodrama that is something of a political statement without overtly being one. It's something of a miracle that this small film got nominated for Best Picture. Catherine Shoard of the UK Guardian is convinced the film has not a chance in hell (SEE this) of winning, though.
The movie is great because, finally, it's a gay film in which nobody dies. This is a daring feat in itself (consider Philadelphia: Tom Hanks dies of AIDS after listening to opera with Denzil Washington; Brokeback Mountain: Jake Gyllenhaal is murdered in the desert leaving Heath Ledger to sniff Jake's bloody shirt to get high; Kiss of the Spider Woman: John Hurt gets killed after going Latino in prison, Milk: Sean Penn finally wins the Oscar for getting assassinated after bedding James Franco etc etc).
The plot concerns a lesbian couple and one hot sperm donor. There are some twists that are almost parodies of cliches involving lesbians. But let's not get into that too much. It's straight-forward, life-affirming melodrama.
Which is pretty much what The King's Speech is. The film is about King George VI learning not to stammer and the awful life of being royal. This is inherently fascinating stuff. There is a really bad cameo by Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill though. And its take on history is misleading. Its a good production and beautiful to look at but it's not the best film of 2010.
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