[ad_1]
Uwhen it comes to age gap movies starring Nicole Kidman, Birth of Jonathan Glazer it is certainly impossible to follow. But newcomer writer Carrie Solomon and director Richard LaGravenese attempt to do so with this romantic comedy for Netflix, which, despite a very sweet high concept, resolves the unresolved sexual tension too early and discards the irony and comedy well before the end of the first act, leaving us with something a little solemn.
The film actually reunites Kidman with Zac Efron; they participated together in The Vestige in 2013, Efron played Chris Cole, a shallow and vain young movie star in Los Angeles who abuses his much-scorned assistant Zara, played by Joey King. With plenty of sulking and eye rolling, she has to cater to his every whim, and in particular her job is to arrange the purchase of the special diamond breakup earrings that Chris always gives to young women he’s about to dump.
Chris then meets Zara’s incredibly hot widowed mother Brooke Harwood (Kidman), a famous writer whose early inspiration was Joan Didion; her sensitivity unlocks Chris’s hidden tenderness and vulnerability, and they have age-gap rock ‘n’ roll sex, to the horror and disgust of Zara, who still has to pick up Chris’s dry cleaning.
The initial setup is great, the Ephronesque rousing phone call montage is tolerable, but the clichéd breakup and transition to the make-up plot jarring. When Chris has to magically stop being a fun puzzler and start being Mr. Perfect, things get pretty unbearable. And there’s a standout moment when Chris gives Brooke her Christmas present: a strangely cheap book with gold embossed lettering called The Brooke Harwood Anthology: “It’s got all your New Yorker and Vogue essays and all your stories in one place! Do you like it?” – “I love it!” Didion would tell him to stick his homemade book where there’s no sun.
[ad_2]
