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I often talk about how there could be different versions of movies, for example if the director had been a woman, if they’d gone for a more typical Hollywood ending, if they’d wanted to deal with real issues or if they’d cast bigger names. It’s merely a way of highlighting strengths or weaknesses in a movie; there could be a different version of Past Lives with more trite plotting or a different version of Challengers with more conventional editing. Maybe a different version of Bombshell with a more female sensibility or a different version of The Creator with less of a focus on the human elements. You get the idea. It’s all theoretical.

Expect very occasionally it isn’t. Twice now in the last six months we have actually got to see that different version, first with Godzilla Minus One which really showed how good Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire could have been with a less bombastic approach, and now we’ve got A Family Affair which is the more broad, less emotional version of Anne Hathaway’s The Idea of You. The press for The Idea of You widely referred to it as a romcom which it absolutely isn’t. This is cheesy romcom interpretation of the same idea.

I didn’t love The Idea of You but I certainly appreciate it a little bit more now. Both feature a single mother who dates a significantly younger famous guy and has to manage the stress this puts on her daughter but A Family Affair examines none of the interesting issues around this. Here the couple might as well be the same age and he might as well not be a celebrity. It literally ignores the most interesting elements of the set up. Instead it concentrates on the fact that the man in question is the objectionable boss of the woman’s daughter, a vein that it gets some mileage from but not enough.

In fact any entertainment it does generate from this narrative is entirely down to the way the cast play it. Joey King brings a great energy as the younger woman in this dynamic and Nicole Kidman has a level of class the movie simply does not deserve. Together they just about save this film and as a result watching it is not a total waste of time.

Kidman and Kathy Bates actually seem to be acting in a different film altogether, which is another analogy I’ve used before. I guess if I have a habit of repeating myself I can’t come down too hard on American cinema for doing the same thing. Is A Family Affair essential viewing? Most certainly not. Will it keep you entertained for a couple of hours? Just about.

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The Ripley Factor:

They have said that the original title of this film was Mother Fucker, but of course it wasn’t. That was never going to go through, just like American Fiction was never going to make into cinemas if it was called Fuck and the 2018 comedy Blockers was never going to survive with its initial title Cock Blockers in tact.

As it is though the proposed first moniker for this movie has stayed as part of the strap line (see above). Even in this state it is awfully reductive to both Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron’s characters and totally at odds with the tone of the film, but I get the joke. Certainly Kidman here is in so much more than just the ‘mother’ role. As portrayed, her Brooke is quite a rounded character, with independence and agency, although this is more down to the performance than the writing. King’s Zara is a bit more of a trope as the young Gen Z heroine, who forgets to focus on her friends as frustration and selfish ambition drive her forward, before having a rushed redemption at the end. (It’s Gen Z now but it was millennials before that. It’s not a new cliche.) King executes one particular pratfall with such prowess early on though that I’ll forgive her anything and she does work hard to bring the mediocre script to life.

There’s probably a different version of this review out there too, but on this occasion this caught me in the right mood and I kind of enjoyed it.