'The Kids are All Right:' Parents are Parents

The Spouse kindly agreed to accompany me to the movies last week where I dragged him to see The Kids are All Right, the new Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo flick.

By the time we left the theater, we were convinced that the whole point of the film was this: Regardless of the fact that the main couple was comprised of two women who had raised two children, ages 15 and 18 (they each got pregnant with donor sperm from the same guy), their gender didn’t really matter all that much. What DID matter most was the fact that raising children changed their relationship, challenged it and sometimes obscured the romantic partners’ ability to see one another as they really are, not simply a collection of assorted weaknesses and flaws that can prove irritating.

In my pop culture column this week I wrote about the commonalities I felt I had with the film’s characters, saying, “. . . I felt as though I was observing some of the similar challenges facing my marriage to my husband being played out on the silver screen, witnessing the inevitable scars child-rearing, and life in general, can cause to a relationship.”

On My Must-See List: 'The Kids are All Right' and 'Eat Pray Love'

As soon as it arrives in Boston area theaters, I'm planning on heading out to see the new Annette Bening/Julianne Moore/Mark Ruffalo film, The Kids are All Right. The family-of-four-with-two-moms-who-got-pregnant-via-donor-sperm-and-get-visited-by-said-sperm-donor-18-years-later movie is getting great buzz, plus I really like Annette Bening.



Another flick about which I'm curious to see is the forthcoming Julia Roberts movie, Eat Pray Love. Wonder if I should read the book first before seeing the movie? (No, I haven't read the book yet, even though it seems like every book club in America has already tackled it. I somehow managed to miss it when it first came out four years ago.) However some people say that reading the book first ruins the movie because the movie can nevr live up to the book. Hmm . . .