A FAMILY AFFAIR (2024) – Yet another romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor funny

Nicole Kidman plays a middle-aged widow with a teenage daughter who falls in love with a famous Hollywood celebrity who is much younger played by Zac Efron. This is not exactly original as it has broad similarities with recent The Idea of You where Anne Hathaway’s single mom character falls in love with a young boy band lead singer played by Nicholas Galitzine. If we were to compare these two movies, I would have to say that Anne Hathaway’s version was much better as the script and characters were better written and appealing. I had several issues with A Family Affair that prevented me from finding this more entertaining that it tries to be.

The pairing of Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron as lovers with a 16-year gap in age difference is not very visually apparent. This is because Zac seem to have aged and no longer have that youthful exuberance that he used to, while Nicole Kidman is made to look much younger than her character’s age of 40-ish (Nicole is actually 57 years old this year). As a result, I do not see the big age difference when they are on screen together although there was zero chemistry between them. The other issue is with the script and story. The jokes feel so desperate for laughs and many of the situations feel unbelievable. For example, Zac Efron’s character is supposed to be this big Hollywood superstar and yet, we are expected to believe that he has no close friends and spends his year-end holidays alone with his dogs! We are also expected to swallow the idea that he hires an inexperienced teenager (Nicole’s daughter) as his personal assistant and have such a high level of dependency on her to keep him on track. His character claims to be harassed by the paparazzi wherever he goes and yet he comes and go from Nicole’s home without any problem. The list goes on and on with all these irregularities in logic.

At least the stunning beach location with some stunning views of the ocean offered some eye candy to an otherwise painful watch. The other plus is Kathy Bates as the ever loving, all knowing and understanding mother-in-law to Nicole’s character. Kathy is an iconic actress and can never do wrong even with a poorly written script and playing a pretty predictable one-dimensional character. Somehow her character manages to come across as more honest and genuine. Now if the show really wanted to shock the audience with big age-gap relationships, they would have matched Kathy with Zac for a greater impact!