The Kids Are All Right ... Despite having seen this dumb movie

 I love the fact that even though both of the kids are officially "adults" now they still like to go to movies with mom and dad. We managed to coordinate all 4 of our schedules and spend a recent Friday night at the movies seeing Scott Pilgrim, which we all enjoyed for different reasons. On the heels of that bonding experience we made plans to see The Kids Are All Right a couple of weeks later.

I had been anxious to see this movie since first hearing about it. As a major champion for same sex marriage rights, I was thrilled to see such a relationship depicted in a mainstream movie. I anticipated realism without sensationalism; in addition to superior acting. I've loved Mia Wasikowska every since I had the pleasure of watching her act out my own life story via her role as Sophie on the series In Treatment. (Okay, so maybe I was never a gymnast and my parents were not rich beautiful successful California people, but the pathos and daddy issues were dead on. I literally wept through her last few sessions with Paul.)

D ended up being tied up with band practice but LD, KD and I went ahead to see this movie.

Wow. What a disappointment; an uncomfortable disappointment. We weren't very far into the movie before being hit with our first gratuitous sex scene. I'm by no means a prude, and the kids have not been overly sheltered to the sexual realities of the world, but sitting between my 18 year old son and twenty year old  daughter while gay male porn plays across the screen was definitely one of my most uncomfortable parenting moments. I knew without looking that LD would already be eye rolling at the gratuitousness of the scene, but KD was caught off-guard.

"Well. This is certainly uncomfortable," I whispered to her. "Probably won't be telling grandma we saw this movie."

I don't have a problem with the fact that our movie couple watched gay male porn - okay, I'll admit to a tiny problem with it because it defies both reason and the opinions of my lesbian friends (whom I queried later). My problem was with the fact that they made us watch it - and that it was completely unnecessary to the story line. We were also treated to a second showing later (including a man-to-man blow job) which was again, completely unnecessary.

In fact, I felt like maybe there was a whole subplot to the movie left on the cutting room floor which might have made the whole gay male issue a bit more relevant to the plot line. Like maybe Laser (the son) was, indeed questioning his sexuality. That certainly would have explained why the character of his douchey friend was included in the movie. Instead, the character of "Laser's friend" (I don't even remember his name) served no purpose except to nose around the lesbian moms' bedroom; find and play the porn; attempt a stupid skateboard trick; and almost pee on a stray dog. Relevance? I sure didn't see any.

And then we have the committed lesbian couple I was so eager to see portrayed. The set up is that they have been committed to each other for (at least) 18 years. They each underwent AI in order to give birth to a child of their own. In my opinion that shows a serious commitment. Why then does the doctor mom act so surprised when the hippie mom acts like ... a hippie. Is this news to her? I've only known them for about 30 minutes but I'm not at all surprised by her behaviour because that's so clearly a fundamental aspect of who she is. Ditto on hippie mom's surprise and indignation when doctor mom is discovered to be on the phone with a patient (okay, never mind that the phone never rang). They've been together 18 years - has she never EVER been called away to deal with a patient before?

And then we have my main complaint about the whole stupid movie, which is that apparently even when someone is in a near 20 year committed monogamous loving homosexual relationship all it takes for one to stray from both the commitment AND their own sexuality is a guy with a big dick. Seriously. The first time hippie mom hops into bed with the hetero male she's known for only a couple of days she is quick to make sure we know she's quite impressed with his endowment. And so begins the numerous scenes of them having heterosexual butt-pumping sex in too many different positions to count.

I'm not even going to bother with talking about the rest of the movie because it pretty much lost all credibility with me right there. Lesbians are turned on by gay male porn and when presented with the opportunity to enjoy a well hung man they will turn their back on their partner, their family, and everything they've ever held sacred. Yeah, right. Ugh.

I would love to have known what led Laser to want to find his bio dad, or why the moms seemed to suddenly not know or communicate with each other, or even why Sophie (she'll always be Sophie to me) was so concerned with her bff's sexual exploits. Instead, the only thing this movie showed me was a bunch of sexual positions I had already seen ... and some gay male porn.

The kids in my own life are definitely all right, as on the ride home they had a long discussion about how gratuitous sex or violence in movies is stupid and how they don't believe that one's sexuality can change on a whim. By the time we got home we were all three pretty much over it. When D asked how the movie was the kids just rolled their eyes and I gave him just enough information to horrify him (he's far more protective than I) before we all turned our attention to playing with Jake, who had been locked in the back yard all evening with no one to play fetch with.

Sometimes just having all of us dorking around together at home is way more fun than going to the movies. anyway.