A Family Affair | Film Review

Zara's (Joey King) life is turned upside down when the famous actor she works for (Zac Efron) starts dating her mother (Nicole Kidman).

I didn't find the premise of this film particularly exciting, maybe because it's similar to 'The Idea of You', but the calibre of actors involved was interesting enough that I wanted to see if it would be better than it looked.

In short, The Idea of You was the better movie. This one had some interesting ideas but nothing worked as well as it could have.

For a start, the pacing was really weird. If the film is about a love story, why are the characters basically already together in the first 30 minutes of the movie? It feels like it comes completely out of nowhere. And while this may have been interesting when it comes to exploring how King's character feels about the romance, that's not how the audience should feel.

And this may not have been as big a problem if the characters had some kind of undeniable chemistry that just drew them together. But the characters and the actors needed much more chemistry for a film like this to work. Their romance wasn't believable in the first 30 minutes and it still wasn't believable when the film was over.

Of the three main characters, Kidman's was the weakest. We don't really get to know her, and for the most part, we don't care about her as much as we care about the other two.

We can see the third-act conflict coming a mile off, and when it does come, the audience don't care because we haven't really bonded with these characters.

One reason for this is that none of the characters are particularly likeable. They don't really feel authentic and we never really get to know them.

Overall, while I like the idea of this film, the result fell flat. For me, I never bought the romance at the centre of the story. And if you don't believe in that, everything surrounding it quickly falls apart.

4.5/10