Friends with Kids
Tagline: Family doesn’t always go according to plan.
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you — that really is pretty much the Bridesmaids cast teaming up for Jennifer Westfeldt’s film, Friends with Kids (which sounds like the ideal title for a potential Bridesmaids sequel). And Westfeldt is certainly invested in her movie, considering that she wrote it in addition to directing it and starring in it.
She plays Julie, a single, childless woman whose social life falls apart when her non-single friends begin families. What to do? She and her platonic friend Jason (Adam Scott) decide to get it on, for the express purpose of bringing up baby as buddies. Can it work? What will their pals make of it? And will we get a vomit scene? (Possibly, not much and not on your life are the best answers to those questions.)
In relative terms, it’s been a fair while since Westfeldt broke out in the cult indie hit Kissing Jessica Stein, so it can’t hurt that her real-life beau, Jon Hamm, may have been helped pull together the in-demand Bridesmaids alumni of Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Chris O’Dowd as well as himself. And there sure seems a lot of love for Westfeldt: “Her intensity feels just right — better than in any film I’ve seen in years,” raves New York magazine. “Friends with Kids still works as a decent romantic dramedy, even if the suspicion of a vanity project lingers like dirty [diaper] odour,” is the slightly more critical opinion of the Guardian. But the Hollywood Reporter arguably finds the best balance, noting that it’s “a romantic comedy that takes time to find its groove but steadily accumulates heart and humor.”