Chosen Family
Chosen Family
Rated as a cute romantic comedy that also has a dark side to it, Chosen Family at least has something to say, although it seems too preoccupied with trying to make us laugh to know what it is.
Only witty Heather Graham stars in, writes and directs Chosen Family, a flick that manages to mix the insane yet amusing family relationships, business, searching for the right person, divorce, and the internet. (Is this a rom-com or a documentary? The answer is the exclamation-marked both, mate!)
It also injects some dreamy strands as it is situated in the extremely cutesy coastal town of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, where the main character – a barely scraping by yoga teacher – occupies a vast and well-decorated house bang on the beach.
The picture opens with Ann (Graham) stating it’s been a life-long pursuit of looking for winners who always disappoint. Not garden variety losers, but extreme losers. Her best friends Max and Frances (Thomas Lennon, Odessa Rae) and Roz (Andrea Savage) are also of the same opinion that Ann usually brings her relationships down with her own decisions. Roz, a divorced woman herself, makes up her mind to address this issue, but it is Max and Frances who inadvertently introduce
someone who appears to be just what the practice ordered.
Steve (John Brotherton) is an attractive contractor who likes to joke but does not play. He understands Ann and is very practical. There is nothing he cannot do, he can cook, and his fried chicken is the best, and he indeed is very good in bed. The only downside that could come up is the fact that his separated wife is contesting the divorce case in the court which is not good for either him or his little daughter Lilly (Ella Grace Helton).
Ann is not in any kind of relationship with her birth family and she is quite certain about it: a father Alfred (Michael Gross) who “fills the church with febrile passion,” a wannabe “calypso star” Dorothy (Julie Halston) and a younger sister Clio (Julia Stiles) who likes to shoot heroin and is a drug addict, all of whom have a bone to pick with her or expect something. Ann is undoubtedly an adult woman, yet in spite of this, she cannot disentangle herself from their mess.
“Chosen Family” is constantly moving from conflict to conflict or triumph to triumph with most situations settling in a perky, stroke of luck fashion. The more serious threads are not, but confronting one of them would have changed this into an entirely different movie, and the other one is resolved in a more or less acceptable way.
Stacey Sargeant who plays Ann’s boss is part of the supporting cast, which is headed by Graham and Stiles who are excellent, followed by Lennon, Savage and Sargeant who are really good, Brotherton and Rae who are good, and finally Gross and Halston who are only okay. Apparently npot every actress in the film really acted loud over the top smart alecks designers wanted the role. Graham may have created a scattershot film but her performance is always bang on. Clio is best described in Stiles’s interpretative bitter scornful voice.
The other character in the film the setting, garners a rather mixed review. It’s striking and attractive, yes, but too many overhead zoom shots of Ann taking s stroll driving through shadey streets lines up with good looking trees. Alright, alright, yes we will go to Rhode Island, but could we please drive around ourselves.
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- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Country: United States
- Director: Heather Graham
- Cast: Heather Graham, Julia Stiles, John Brotherton
