Friends with Kids boasts a terrific cast that elevates the laughs above that of your average romantic comedy, but the story can’t help but devolve from unique and entertaining to inevitable and generic, which is a shame considering the first 80 minutes or so are really quite strong.
Making her directorial debut on top of writing and starring in the film, Jennifer Westfeldt shows some promise after largely being known as a character actor on such television shows as “24”, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place”. Here she plays Julie, an ambitious businesswoman who’s managed to maintain a long term friendship with Manhattan playboy, Jason (Adam Scott). When we meet them, the free-wheeling Jason and Julie are faced with the proposition of losing their four closest friends as they remain the lone singles in a group of married couples preparing to start families.
Playing Jason and Julie’s married friends, the supporting cast is made up of Bridesmaids alums Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm and Chris O’Dowd, and during a dinner party with Leslie and Alex (Rudolph and O’Dowd) and Ben and Missy (Hamm and Wiig), Jason and Julie witness the effect marriage and kids can have on a couple. Their friends seem as if they haven’t slept in months and are constantly at each other’s throats. Considering a solution to the parenting problem, and individually wanting children of their own, the two lifelong friends believe co-parenting with a best friend they love and admire will help avoid the problems married couples face. Could they be on to something?
For the majority of the film’s running time Westfeldt has crafted a story that doesn’t necessarily depend so much on how well Jason and Julie are fairing after their risky venture, but equal time is spent focusing on not only their friendship and the resulting child, but their friends, the hardships of marriage, the idea of finding a mate when you’re single with a kid and how hard it is to maintain that relationship once you get it.
Jason begins dating a hot Broadway dancer played by Megan Fox and Julie believes she may have found what she’s looking for in a single father played by Ed Burns. Everything is going so unexpectedly well with the film that it’s for these reasons it’s an absolute shame it devolves into the movie you would’ve otherwise expected it to be when considering the film’s premise. Even more frustrating is that even once Westfeldt decides to go that direction she delays the inevitable. Ugh, I could’ve pulled my hair out at the missed opportunity here.
Despite its ending, the film remains quite winning. The first 80% is truly great, taking the story into corners you never would have expected and doing so in not only funny, but authentic ways that occasionally brush up against some hard truths about marriage and relationships. Wiig, Hamm, Rudolph and O’Dowd are great, Megan Fox fills the role of the buxom hot girl to the best of her ability and Scott and Westfeldt carry it home.
Westfeldt shows true talent here making me think I need to check out her Independent Spirit Award-nominated first screenplay Kissing Jessica Stein for which she also won a Satellite Award in 2003. She’s obviously got some talent and this film shows she’s got some guts. I just wish she’d stuck to those gut-level instincts when it came to crafting the film’s finale.
