The fantasy of dating someone famous comes saddled with reality’s baggage. No matter how down-to-earth an actor seems in interviews, or how deeply a musician’s influences speak to you, these always-on jobs demand so much time and emotional energy that there can’t be much left over to bond with a normie. The power dynamics are inherently weird, and performing for a leering celebrity culture has to warp their views of human connection.
It’s hard not to become jaded when everyone wants something from you. These impassable roads make up the dramatic infrastructure of the well-worn “famous dates normal” rom-com subgenre, except in the dismal case of . This Netflix rom-com adds a wrinkle—it follows an age-gap romance between an empty-headed movie star and his assistant’s mom—and, satisfied with its innovation, abandons everything that made the trope worth navigating in the first place.
The relationships between alliterative action star Chris Cole (Zac Efron), his harried assistant Zara (Joey King), and her widowed mom Brooke (Nicole Kidman) could, at almost every stage of the film, be completely separated from their professional lives. Brooke sleeps with a younger guy her daughter dislikes; it rarely gets more than skin deep. And, as Efron and Kidman struggle to emote, the feelings their waxen faces fail to convey are anyone’s guess.
A Family Affair A Family Affair Directed by Richard LaGravenese, every moment in sits there as lifelessly as Gerard Butler’s cha.