And here was I thinking that Australia’s very own Nicole Kidman had a nose for a good movie role!

Not any more after watching her stumble – albeit with her usual professionalism – through this 2024 Netflix streaming A Family Affair. What a hodge podge of rom-com stodge.

The trouble for this reviewer is that she looks plasticky and not her real self. Having Zac Efron has your leading man/love interest probably doesn’t help.

Anyone know if this Efron has had any previous fillum work? He looks kinda half familiar but then again, not really. Efron is in that sub-category of “stars” with names and faces that are hard to remember and separate from their peers. Think Channing Tatum. Does anyone really know what she looks like?

It’s probably not their fault that this current second-string batch – existing below the ranks of say, brothers Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling – are largely forgettable. Who can remember what they looked like when those other brothers Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman were leading actors in the 90s? Of course no-one can. Because no one cared.

So, should we waste any time running through the storyline for the lamentable and equally forgettable A Family Affair?

This Efron character plays a Hollywood action super star Chris Cole – a bit of a stretch there, already – and Joey King is his long-suffering aide/offsider Zara Ford. Zara lives with her mom, author Brooke Harwood (Kidman), and any chemistry this flick is supposed to have was meant to flicker and then fizz brightly when Cole and Harwood meet.

But here’s the problem for writer Carrie Solomon striving to create some heat in this passionless affair. Efron’s character Cole is, to put it bluntly, a cunt. He treats his underling Zara Ford in any number of contemptible ways. He makes her write written apologies for mistakes he’s made. He gets her to do the dirty work upfront when he breaks up with girlfriends. Which is often. He’s shallow and repulsive and should be in jail for coercive control. He really is a dreadful prick.

Zara understands all this perfectly, which means she’s totally against any relationship her mother starts up with Cole, a not-so-sweet 16 years younger than Kidman’s Brooke. (In real as opposed to reel life, Kidman is 20 years older than Efron).

The courting couple are forced to continue their fling in secret and if the writer had hopes that the daughter’s final, begrudging acceptance of the affair will create a few tears or an extra half-star at movie’s end, they were totally dashed by the storyline’s overall implausibility.

There are dozens of those Canadian-made Christmas rom-coms, staring unknowns just like Zac Efron, with corny, predictable storylines probably written over a weekend, that generate more heat, and sometimes a few embarrassing tears, than this sad and sorry mess. A Family Affair has all the charisma of an ingrown toenail; all the heat of a flat AAA battery.

So why the one-and-a-half stars? Joey King and Kathy Bates give it their best shot.

Don Gordon-Brown

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