The Kids Are All Right (2010)

The thing that I like most about this movie is that it starts from the premise that gay marriage is an established social fact. Nic and Jules, a couple with two children, a Volvo and a lovely home, are the picture of normalcy. Which is to say that they are loving, devoted, responsible and a bit of a mess. And they are both women. The parentage of their children is a bit unusual as well--they each have a child, using the same sperm donor--so the donor is biologically related to both kids, whereas each parent is only biologically related to one.
It is difficult to find the right shorthand for these women. On the one hand, Nic is the bread winner, and Jules is the slightly flaky, slightly insecure stay-at-home parent. Those descriptors are true, but they don't encapsulate what is going on, which is a mid-life, long-term marriage melt down.
Nic and Jules don’t always communicate very well (Nic is patronizing and judgemental and Jules is sensitive and quick to take offense), and their children — the 18-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and her 15-year-old brother, Laser (Josh Hutcherson) — have reached the stage when parents seem like alien, irrational and outmoded beings. Your parents are supposed to understand you (not that they ever can), while you have no choice but to tolerate them.
Enter Paul--the sperm donor for both women's children. He is single, affable, running a successful business, and has a self confidence that is charming. When Joni calls him, he is a good sport and a bit of an adventurer, gamely accepts her invitation to meet the family, and his relaxed manner smoothes over an awkward initial meeting.
Much more awkwardness will follow, along with some real emotional peril. Nic and Jules are not won over at first, but he manages to connect with both Joni and Laser in ways that their moms can’t. He gets Joni to see she needs a little more independence, and gets Laser to dump his unsavory friend. His position as a sympathetic outsider grants him insights that the family members lack, and in turn Joni, Laser and Jules come to see him as a confidante and counselor, a special kind of friend.
But nothing is more disruptive to domestic order than an unattached heterosexual man. In mid-19th-century America, anxiety about guys more or less like Paul drove movements for social and religious reform, and the film suggests that those advocates of temperance and other remedies may have had a point. Not that Paul, an effortless seducer, is exactly the villain of the movie. He starts out too good to be true and winds up causing a lot of trouble, but at the end he’s more scapegoat than demon, and the film forgives him even if the other characters cannot.