YMMV / The Kids Are All Right

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Don't be so mean and neglectful to your wife or else she'll eventually stray...with a man.
  • Don't let your kids meet their biological dad. It will destroy your family.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Jules, who has her marriage troubles with Nic and her affair with Paul despite identifying as a lesbian.
  • Sexuality being as complex as it is, it's possible that she loves women, but lusts after men. In other words, she couldn't have a fulfilling emotional connection with a man, but she can't have fulfilling sex without one. Alternatively, her wife is just crappy in bed.
  • Or that the thrill of the affair led to the passionate sex in response to the fact that her long-term relationship was in a bit of a sexual rut.
  • Then again, there's that thing with the gay male porn, which is (surprise!) a bit of Truth in Television.
  • Jules firing her Hispanic gardener late in the film. Did she really fire him for being high on the job? Or did she fire him also as a means to keep quiet about her affair with Paul?
• Award Snub: Neither Julianne Moore nor Mia Wasikowska receiving Supporting Actress nominations for their work.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Although Jules and Nic drive off happily together in the end, there's no indication that either of them has grown or learned from the experience, with even Laser noting that they should just stay together because they're old, which isn't exactly a foundation for a happy marriage. Additionally, Paul's life is in ruins and the family suffer no repercussions for it.
• Jerkass Woobie: Jules is flighty and its implied Nic has been the bread winner and responsible one for a relationship that is old enough to have a daughter going to college.
  • Paul. While he shouldn't have slept with Jules it's obviously that he genuinely liked her and was possibly even falling in love with her, and had also hit it off with his kids and rapidly built a good relationship with them, only to lose all that in an instant when their affair is discovered.
• Retroactive Recognition: Shoshanna is Joni's friend.
• Squick:
  • The kid Clay trying to urinate on a live dog.
  • Clay playing around with a dildo he found snooping around in Nic and Jules' bedroom.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Nic and Jules fight after discovering her affair with Paul.
  • Joni and Laser running away after being caught listening to their moms fight and finding out Paul ruined their moms marriage.
  • Joni's drunken fight with her moms, telling them she doesn't want to see either of them when she goes off to college.
  • Paul attempting to apologize to his kids and their moms only to get the door slammed in his face.
  • Jules apologizing to her wife and kids about destroying their family with her affair and telling them how she loves them and how marriage is hard work. Doubles as Heart Warming moment too.
  Jules: I need to say something. Um, it's no big secret your mom and I are in hell right now, and, uh... Bottom line is, marriage is hard. It's really fuckin' hard. Just... just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing. It's a fucking marathon, okay? So, sometimes, you know, you're... you're together so long, that you just... You stop seeing the other person. You just see weird projections of your own junk. Um, instead of talking to each other, you go off the rails and act grubby and make stupid choices, which is what I did, and I feel sick about it because I love you guys, and I love your mom, and that's the truth. Sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most. I don't know why. I... You know, if I read more Russian novels, then... Anyway, I just wanted to say how sorry I am for what I did. I hope you'll forgive me eventually. Thank you.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The affair between Paul and Jules was completely unnecessary. There was enough friction and tension due to his presence in the family's life and the writers could have easily stuck with that instead of ruining Paul's newfound relationship with everyone the moment the affair was discovered.

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