A Sharp, Strange Comedy About Finding Your People
We are late to this family reunion. Still, better now than never.
Family is easily one of the funniest and smartest comedies we’ve seen in a long time. The film premiered at SXSW in 2018 and reached U.S. theaters in April 2019 — well before the pandemic — yet this little gem somehow missed our viewing list.
Taylor Schilling has become one of those performers whose movies we now make a point to watch. She is terrific here as Kate Stone, a brutally direct, career-obsessed executive who keeps everyone at arm’s length until one night of babysitting her niece unexpectedly turns into an entire week.
That niece is Maddie, played by Bryn Vale, a bullied and socially awkward kid who dreams of running away to become a Juggalo. Yes, that is the actual setup — and somehow writer-director Laura Steinel turns it into something genuinely funny, unexpectedly tender and much smarter than the usual reluctant-babysitter comedy.
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Taylor Schilling Leads, but Everybody Gets a Moment
Schilling’s deadpan timing gives the movie its wonderfully prickly center, while Vale supplies the heart without turning Maddie into a sentimental movie-kid cliché. Their chemistry makes the film feel less like a manufactured lesson and more like two outsiders slowly realizing they might actually understand each other.
Then Fabrizio Zacharee Guido walks in as Dennis — better known as Baby Joker — and steals every second he gets. His gas-station appearance is precisely the kind of strange, committed little performance that makes you immediately ask, “Wait, who is that?”
Kate McKinnon also drops in as Jill, the tightly wound neighborhood mom whose passive aggression deserves its own homeowners-association warning label. Brian Tyree Henry, Allison Tolman, Eric Edelstein and Matt Walsh round out a cast that knows exactly how weird this movie wants to be.
The bigger surprise is how much warmth sits underneath all that chaos. Family is about belonging, but it never gets syrupy about it. It understands that sometimes the people who finally make sense to us are every bit as strange as we are.
Funny, odd, heartfelt and only 85 minutes long? This is exactly the kind of overlooked comedy we love discovering years late and immediately telling everybody else to watch.
More From Taylor Schilling’s Family
The comedy’s colorful world brings together one severely overworked aunt, one wonderfully unconventional niece and several scene-stealing outsiders.
Kate McKinnon, Taylor Schilling and Bryn Vale in promotional stills courtesy of The Film Arcade; Fabrizio Zacharee Guido in a frame from Universal Pictures At Home’s official preview.
If Family somehow slipped past you too, consider this our official invitation to show up late. The reunion is still worth it.
Watch a 10-Minute Preview of Taylor Schilling’s Family
Universal Pictures At Home shared this extended look at Laura Steinel’s comedy for its DVD and digital release.
Sources: Apple TV; Entertainment Weekly; The Film Arcade press materials via Blackfilm; and Universal Pictures At Home.
