About seven minutes into the new Netflix romantic comedy A Family Affair , Zac Efron, playing a conceited, not-too-bright movie star who's just broken up with his girlfriend, is whining to his assistant (played by Joey King) that she needs to pick up his stuff from the ex-girlfriend's place. He left treasured items there, he explains. He left his autographed Jordans! He left his Himalayan t-shirt! And then he says, gravely, as if it shows the urgency of the mission, "I left my copy of The Courage to be Disliked .
" And I said, in my living room, "Ha!" The Courage to be Disliked is a real book . It doesn't actually endorse the practice of being a jerk; it's more nuanced than that . But this character, without a pinch of self-awareness, bemoaning the disappearance of a book called The Courage to be Disliked ? That's a very solid joke, very solidly delivered by Efron.
He follows it up with, "I have several underwears there. And people sell those." Eventually, the movie star, whose name is Chris, has one too many fights with the assistant, whose name is Zara, and he has to go find her to make amends.
But when he goes to her house, he finds her mother, Brooke (Nicole Kidman), a beautiful widowed author who lives in the kind of gorgeous and classy house that starred in most of the best Nancy Meyers movies . (It's sharply different from Chris' house, which is equally fancy but also ugly and impractical, as seen in an effective little bit about his absurd front door.) Brooke and Chris.
