Nepo-disasters: why Ewan and Clara McGregor are only the latest onscreen parent-child embarrassment
If the dismal reviews meted out to the new film Bleeding Love prove anything at all, it’s that parents need to think very carefully before starring in movies with their children. This film – which Peter Bradshaw called “a complete toecurling nepo vanity project” – stars Ewan McGregor and his real-life daughter Clara. And on paper that sounds great. After all, every parent-child relationship is a complex cocktail of affection, antagonism and resentment, and that really should work gangbusters on screen. If you’re going to bring baggage to a role, it may as well be the baggage that literally defines who you are.
It is clear that, with Bleeding Love, this didn’t happen. But don’t think for a second that this is a one-off mishap signifying some grave fault on the part of the McGregors. Parent-child movies rarely work.
Worst of all are the films, and you can spot them a mile off, in which a parent has deliberately elbowed room for their kid. Sunny Sandler, for instance, is a genuinely promising actor with a number of good films to her name. However, it’s hard to truly judge her on her own merits given that every single film she has performed in has either starred or been produced by her father Adam Sandler. Similarly Maude and Iris Apatow would have a much better chance of convincing the world of their standalone talents if so much of their work hadn’t been directed, produced or created by their father Judd
Apatow or co-starred their mother, Leslie Mann.
Will and Jaden Smith also deserve special mention since, in the two films they made together – The Pursuit of Happyness and After Earth – you can tangibly feel every atom of the heavy lifting Will is doing to carry Jaden. These films also fall foul of some of the other terrible things that can happen when parents and children star together. They’re both unbearably indulgent, as if having his kid on board stopped Will Smith from being rigorous when it came to developing the material. And in the case of After Earth, the whole thing smells like the worst kind of vanity project. It looks to have been conceived by Will Smith, who has a story and producer credit, solely as a way for him to act alongside his son. And, boy, it shows.
Which isn’t to say such films never work, of course. Off the top of my head I can think of four very good films starring parents and their offspring that work for different reasons. The 2015 western Forsaken stars Donald and Kiefer Sutherland as an estranged father and son, and it works precisely because you can feel the real-life relationship in all its knotty complexity bleed in from the margins. There’s a respect between the characters, but it’s a snarling one, which drips with all sorts of unspoken indignation. Similarly, the strained and exasperated father-son relationship between Martin and Char
lie Sheen feels extremely real in Wall Street.
The other times the dynamic has worked has been when actors have deliberately diminished their relationship in service of a strong directorial voice. The most obvious example is Wild at Heart, where Diane Ladd and Laura Dern both threw themselves on the tracks for David Lynch. The other is Melancholia, which features Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård. Not only did both actors have to match their performances to the exacting demands of Lars von Trier but, interestingly, they didn’t play father and son in it. Instead, Stellan plays the boss of Alexander’s wife. They’re just two guys working on the same movie. Also, while we’re here, I’m willing to cut some slack for any film where Brendan and Domhnall Gleeson work together, simply because they’re great.
There are other loopholes, too. If a child is too young to form memories when they appear in a film with their parents, for example, then this is more likely to be down to practicality than straight-up nepotism. Angelina Jolie got her daughter Vivienne to be in a few scenes of Maleficent, but only because Vivienne was said to be the only toddler who didn’t burst into tears upon seeing Jolie in her wicked witch makeup. So that film gets a pass in a way that Tomb Raider, in which Jolie shared some truly terrible scenes with her father Jon Voight, does not.
These films were all probably immense fun to make – who wouldn’t want to hang out with their kid making movies all day? But that doesn’t automatically make them good. If icky sentimentality is what you’re aiming for, go ahead and do it. But if quality is your priority, maybe still try it … just remember that the film might be better if you’ve cultivated a really horrible relationship with your parents first.