Friends with Kids

Remember the old Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedies of yesteryear? Well, Rock was gay and we can’t be sure about Doris. But love was never even close to what those old films tried to depict. Rosalie and I just saw a modern romantic comedy and neither of us is quite sure what to make of it. Friends with Kids, starring Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt (who also wrote and directed), was all about the relationships of husbands and wives, of unwed friends and lovers, and what a confusing mess it was. Even the expressions “love affair” and “making love” are misleading since most affairs are more about lust than love and couples make lust more often than love. A trite T-shirt saying romantically suggests, “Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.” Well, Jason (Scott) and Julie (Westfeldt) keep proclaiming that they’re only good friends, not attracted to each other sexually, the two of them more like really close brother and sister than lovers. Their married friends all have young children and their marriages show cracks in their marital foundations. So, Jason and Julie decide together to have a child without the confusion of marriage—equal financial and child-rearing responsibilities. Meanwhile, they both agree that it shouldn’t interfere with their search for the perfect mate, with all the sexual coupling that goes with such a search. They produce a boy, they raise him together, they find what they each think is the perfect one. We can all see what’s coming, but it was satisfying to see it happen, just as all the “hand in hand, walking into the sunset” happy endings starring Rock and Doris. This one certainly wasn’t any Sleepless in Seattle, but it was worth seeing.