THE FRIENDLY TWINS OUTSHINE COLD KEIRA
KRISTEN WIIG and Bill hader, long-time collaborators on U.s. TV show saturday Night Live, bring their easy rapport to The skeleton Twins, a thoughtful and likeable drama with comic riffs, rather than comedy- drama, playing a pair of estranged siblings, Maggie and Milo.
They are reunited when Maggie learns that Milo is in hospital recovering from a suicide attempt. Coincidentally, she was also contemplating ending her life, even though on the surface she is contentedly suburban, with a steady job as a dental nurse and a relentlessly bubbly but devoted partner (nicely played by Luke Wilson).
Milo, on the other hand, a failed actor with a messy (gay) love life, seems to have more grounds for self-pity. As Maggie takes Milo into her home and the pair rekindle their childhood closeness, we learn how and why they are both so screwed up.
There are some big themes here, including parental neglect, promiscuity, depression and an inappropriate teacher- pupil relationship, but director and cowriter Craig Johnson integrates them skilfully and keeps the film ticking along nicely with only occasional lapses of judgment, such as an episode in Maggie’s dental surgery that isn’t half as funny as it tries to be, despite the valiant efforts of hader and especially the beguilingly appealing Wiig.
As ONE of those who can find nothing especially beguiling about Keira Knightley, Lynn shelton’s say When was something of an endurance test.
Knightley plays an emotionally arrested 29- year- old American, Megan, whose old gang from school are all growing up at a faster rate than she is, getting married and having babies. Outside a convenience store one night she is asked by a group of teenagers if she will buy them some alcohol, and one of them, Annika ( the excellent Chloe Grace Moretz), becomes a friend.
Megan spins her soppy live-in boyfriend a yarn, and goes to stay with Annika for a week, finding her emotional level as a proxy teen, but also finding herself falling for Annika’s quirky lawyer father (sam Rockwell).
how much you enjoy it all largely depends on whether you think Knightley is a dreamboat, wafting clouds of charm, or, as i’m afraid i do, utterly exasperating, acting as so often with her voice, her mouth, her chin, but not her heart.