"Friends With Kids" starts off as a wonderfully entertaining, very funny and truly smart film about two close friends who do the unconventional and decide to have a baby together...as friends. Unfortunately what starts off as a great, strong, original comedy soon downward spirals into the unfortunate abyss of RomCom hell.
What sparks this decision? The fact that they watched their four closest friends, two couples, go through relationship hell due to the onset of...children. The couple who used to have sex in bathrooms hardly talk to each other and the happy-go-lucky couple do nothing but bicker.
So Julie and Jason figure they might as well have a kid together, skipping the affect this has on a relationship, as they can simply continue to date others. In other words, they skipped marriage and went right to the divorce.
Jennifer Westfeldt plays Julie but also wrote and directed this film. You might recognize her from the fantastic-but-short-lived comedy "Notes from the Underbelly" or the eighth season of "24," but she also wrote the excellent film "Kissing Jessica Stein," this film somewhat proving that "Stein" was not a fluke.
Westfeldt could be a comedic force to be reckoned with. If she avoids any further Hollywood trappings.
FWK, as mentioned, does start off in an excellent fashion. An honest, funny, harsh, crude look at child rearing for Gen Y. And even though it has been getting some criticisms for making it look like children will ruin any relationship, that is not the point Westfeldt was trying to make in some sort of blanket statement. She was looking at just a specific group of friends, and what a great bunch they are! "Parks and Recreation" star Adam Scott takes the lead as Jason, Julie's platonic baby daddy. SNL-alum and "Bridesmaids" star Maya Rudolph is the highly stressed and easily irritated Leslie while "Bridesmaids"'s Chris O'Dowd plays her slacker husband. As for the other couple, it is just unfortunate they didn't get more screen time, both having been slightly under-utilized: the magnificent Kirsten Wiig (SNL) and Jon Hamm (Mad Men) as the once-over-sexed-and-now-over-drinking couple who are unravelling, both also having starred in that little film called...."Bridesmaids." Jon Hamm also has the distinction of being Jennifer Westfeldt's husband....in real life.
Sadly, what starts off as a hilarious and irreverent comedy about love, marriage and babies, culminating in a wonderfully executed stand-off between friends at a cabin in Vermont, suddenly takes an all-too familiar and completely unnecessary clichéd Hollywood turn as (SPOLIER ALERT!) what was once platonic suddenly changes to something not so platonic, completely ruining the wonderful flow of an otherwise excellent comedy.
If Westfeldt had only kept friends as friends, this may have been a far more memorable and original film, but she inexplicably decided to make one wrong turn, leaving this film with an ending equal to that of a huge stack of useless RomComs. An utterly disappointing predictable end to a film that was, up until the last fifteen minutes, a truly great comedy of higher-than-usual standard.
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