Kids are all right, The

Will the Academy dare? LGBT movie fans hold bated breaths, to see if either Annette Bening or Julianna Moore, or both, will be nominated for 2010 Best Actress Oscars for their roles as lesbian moms in The Kids Are All Right. This could also be the year that the Academy might nominate Jim Carrey and/or Ewan MacGregor for playing homosexual lovers in I Love You Philip Morris (which is scheduled, for a third time, to finally get some sort of initial distribution in North America in December 2010).

Bening and Moore complement each other well as a short-haired alpha-female doctor and somewhat dizzy wannabe landscape designer. Bening went to an agency to find an acceptable sperm donor and, 18 years later, her daughter (Australia-born TV child actor Mia Alice in Wonderland Wasikowska) is ready to go off to college. Her 15-year-old brother (veteran child actor Josh Cirque du Freak Hutcherson) is another product of the same donor's sperm, given to Moore; he wants to find out about his dad. An 18-year-old is legally able to do if the donor agrees, so the girl enquires on his behalf and they both meet the donor, who rides a motorcycle and is an organic farmer and restaurateur (Mark Ruffalo in his regular curly-haired twinkling-eyed form). You'll know by now that the movie's set in California.

Apparently, state law does not require the second parent's approval before contact is made with a donor. Just as incredibly, Ruffalo's character has no qualms about meeting his sperm's offspring after a one-minute phone call. Director and co-writer Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon) expects her audience to accept other dubious screenplay ploys, from Moore's gay character's remarkably eager bedroom activity with Ruffalo to the son's inexplicable friendship with a coke-snorting lout and Bening's soberly sentimental rendition of a Joni Mitchell song.

The talented cast dispel disbeliefs, doing wonders with dialogue that is mostly wry and witty as well as contrived. For much of the time, though, audience attention is side-whacked by a loud pop soundtrack, suggesting that the director and her co-writer (Stuart Keeping the Faith Blumberg) set out to attract teen movie-goers to a film focused on middle-aged parents.

The film won praise at Sundance, did well at the US box office (US$25 million versus a US$4 million budget) and can be classified as an above-average TV movie (with a G&L plot and bedroom scenes that wouldn't be allowed on US network TV). Bening and Moore make it work; I'd wager that Bening will be nominated (and lose out for the fourth time).