The lesson for this movie is that lesbians should only get sperm from their most natural donors: gay men. If they had just asked one of their fabulous friends to impregnate them instead of going to a sperm bank none of this drama would have happened, since no gay man is going to have any interest in partaking in the nonsense that takes place in this movie.
I appreciated this movie, although I would not say that I truly enjoyed it. There are some good things about it: Annete Benning's acting and most of the rest of the cast. However, I didn't find the plot or most of the story particularly believable for the most part. I felt like the plot existed so they could make a movie out of it, which is idiotic since that's the reason the plot exists in every movie. However, both Juliane Moore and Mark Ruffalo's characters were not fleshed out enough to make the affair to seem truly convincing.
Okay I get it, Nic (Annette Benning) was a little high strung, and then there was the time that she had to take a call from a patient and left poor Jules (Julianne Moore) in the tub all by lonesome. But at the beginning of the movie they were getting it on to gay porn for christsake...things didn't seem to be THAT bad. While Paul (Mark Ruffalo) is certainly sexy as hell, his character didn't really get my loins all hot and bothered with his west coast yippieness. Their first kiss came literally out of nowhere besides rather forced sexual tension.
The worst part is the outcome of the affair...Paul falls in love with Jules, and lets go of the gorgeous waitress he was banging at the beginning of the movie. It goes against his all appeal of a free-spirit rebel. However, once the truth comes out Julianne realizes she was just having a fling and loves her family. I'm not the type to think if you have an affair it means you don't love your primary partner, but since one of the justifications for the affair was Annette's lack of attention was part of her 'justification' it didn't feel to really ring true for me.
Observing the family dynamics were another plus for this movie. Having grown up in a rather emotionally repressed household, watching families even attempt to talk about their feelings in the open always stuns me. Both the kids do a top notch job, especially Josh Hutcherson as Laser who finds his male role model and is ultimately let down. The best scenes are when they are all at the dinner table together sharing stories and squabbling.
I think the concept for this movie is great and introduces a lot of issues regarding family, motherhood, and fatherhood. However, the affair just seemed sort of cliche and trite, when if they were creative they could have gone in a whole different direction.
