Westfeldt: Friends With Kids (2011)

Friends With Kids was marketed as a kind of sequel to Bridesmaids - it features four of the core cast members (Kristen Wiig, Chris O’Dowd, Jon Hamm and Maya Rudolph) and is also about thirtysomethings navigating marriage, parenthood and middle class life. Those similarities aren’t the whole story though, since all four of these actors are placed quite far in the background, where they form a backdrop for the unusual relationship that develops between Julie Keller (Jennifer Westfeldt) and Adam Fryman (Adam Scott). Julie and Adam have been friends for years, they’re both hitting forty and they both want a kid, so they decide to have a child together, as friends, and to continue living their single lives in the same way they always have. A more conventional film might be about the way Julie and Adam’s friendship devolves into romance, and there are hints of that, especially towards the end, but it’s never clear that that’s what occurs. Instead, most of the film involves them happily raising their child as friends, if unconventional friends, which provokes an extraordinary response from Wiig, O’Down, Hamm and Rudolph, who are pretty much fused into a single chorus. All of them are deeply unhappy with their own marriages, and their rage at Julie and Adam’s happiness – or comparative happiness – expands out into a series of unbelivable diatribes against alternative models of marriage, family and parenthood, with a viciousness that makes Polanski’s Carnage look positively civilised by comparison. At times, it’s hard not to see the film as an allegory of gay marriage and parenthood – after all, Westfeldt’s first film was Kissing Jessica Stein – or at least an effort to show how apparently liberal, open-minded couples can become conservative under the miserable pressure and status anxiety of their own marriages. That makes for quite an unusual tone – too hateful, at times, to really make sense as a consistent comedy, it feels more like an exposure of the drawbridge mentality that so many open-minded romantic comedies really espouse. That’s not to say it’s a parodic gesture either, but that it feels like a work in progress, as Westfeldt takes stock of all the familiar romantic structures and strictures, trying to figure out what to keep and what to leave behind, as we move towards a new kind of family, and a new era of family values.