Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron Star in Charming Romantic Comedy : NPR

About seven minutes into Netflix’s new romantic comedy A family matterZac Efron, who plays a vain, not-so-smart movie actor who has just broken up with his girlfriend, complains to his assistant (played by Joey King) that she has to pick up his stuff from his ex-girlfriend’s house. He left some valuables there, he explains. He left his signed Jordans! He left his Himalayan T-shirt! And then he says, gravely, as if to convey the urgency of the mission: “I left my copy of The courage to be hated.” And I said, in my living room: “Ha!”

The courage to be hated is a real book. In fact, he doesn’t condone the practice of being a jerk; it’s more nuanced than that. But this character, without an ounce of self-awareness, laments the disappearance of a book called The courage to be hatedIt’s a very solid joke, very well told by Efron. He goes on to say, “I have several pairs of underwear there. And people are selling them.”

Eventually, the movie star, whose name is Chris, argues too often with the assistant, whose name is Zara, and he has to go to her to make amends. But when he goes to her house, he finds her mother, Brooke (Nicole Kidman), a beautiful widowed writer who lives in the kind of gorgeous, elegant house that starred in many of Nancy Meyers’s best movies. (It’s very different from Chris’s house, which is equally chic but also ugly and impractical, as seen in an effective little sketch about its absurd front door.) Brooke and Chris start drinking tequila, they get along well, and Zara, who lives at home and has few boundaries with her mother, eventually catches them upstairs in Brooke’s bedroom.

Zara’s dismay over her mother’s relationship with Chris isn’t about the age difference (which isn’t often discussed), but about the fact that she’s seen Chris dump her enough times to worry that her mother will get hurt. What follows in Carrie Solomon’s script is part Chris-Brooke love story, part Chris-Zara constant confrontation, and part Zara-Brooke mother-daughter story. And honestly, in this film from director Richard LaGravenese, it all works pretty well!

Joey King as Zara Ford and Zac Efron as Chris Cole in A family matter.

Tina Rowden/Netflix

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Tina Rowden/Netflix

Some of these elements — particularly an older woman who becomes involved with a famous younger man — may recall the recent film The idea of ​​youin which Anne Hathaway fell in love with a boy band member played by Nicholas Galitzine. I didn’t like that movie at all, partly because it wasn’t funny enough, partly because the romance wasn’t compelling, and partly because the ending lacked emotional resonance. (It was based on a book with a completely different ending, and it turns out you can’t just take a carefully constructed story and flip the ending on its head and have it make sense.) That book wasn’t written to be a romantic comedy, but was adapted and slotted into the romantic comedy box. This one, on the other hand, is supposed to be one—and it shows.

Efron is a much more successful, charismatic and (above all) funny main character than Galitzine (who I would have liked in Red, white and royal blue) opposite Hathaway in The idea of ​​you. And it’s refreshing to see Kidman happily making out with someone, at least temporarily breaking out of the sad, haunted persona rut she’s been in for the past few years. Chris’ relationship with Brooke feels real and brings out beautiful things in both of them, starting with the moment she explains the myth of Icarus to him so he can understand its ties to her film franchise, The rush to Icarusshe’s never seen. He certainly seems like an idiot at first (“I’m Australian.” “Oh, you know Margot Robbie?” “…No.” “I do.”), but as he gets more comfortable, he becomes more and more popular with Brooke, not to mention, you know, really hot.

Back in 2012, I wrote that Efron was making an interesting play to follow in the footsteps of someone like Ryan Gosling. (At the time, in his early twenties, Efron was starring in a Nicholas Sparks movie.) Gosling was also a Disney kid, and he managed to become a very good dramatic actor, a very good comedic actor, and a very swoon-worthy romantic lead. Efron doesn’t have any Oscar nominations yet, but he was excellent in a purely dramatic role in The Iron Claw in 2023, and he’s funny enough here as a willfully awkward hunk that he could have been a pretty terrific Ken if Gosling hadn’t been available – or a good Fall Guy.

King is a well-established Netflix rom-com heroine herself, but she does a great job here, too. Aside from the romance, the part of the story where Zara discovers that the world doesn’t revolve around her, even in her relationship with her mother, is particularly welcome. In a scene with her grandmother, played (brilliantly as always) by Kathy Bates, Zara begins to understand what we all need to understand at some point: your parents aren’t just your parents, they’re also human beings with lives, thoughts, and desires that have nothing to do with you. She also has a moment of truth with her best friend (Liza Koshy) about how her problems aren’t the center of the universe, which gives the whole final act a very nice “What if someone had forcefully told Rory Gilmore to get her act together?”

Nicole Kidman as Brooke Harwood in A family matter.

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It’s too early to talk about a golden age of streaming rom-coms, because the ones we have are still very uneven and because on cable, it’s not like they ever went away. But there are stars, a budget, a script and a direction that suggest that interest in the genre is growing and performing well.