Film
The Kids Are All Right
A wry, tender comedy-drama about a long-married lesbian couple whose household gets shaken loose when their teenage kids track down the sperm donor who fathered them. It's less about scandal than about marriage's ordinary fatigue and the strange elasticity of family. Funny, sharply observed, occasionally painful — a film for anyone who likes their domestic dramas with real teeth.
If you liked this
20th Century Women2016
Annette Bening again, this time raising a son with the help of an unconventional household of women. Same warmth, same interest in messy, loving families that don't look like the brochure.
But Looser and more nostalgic than plot-driven — if you want narrative momentum, this drifts more than it drives.

Private Life2018no page yet
Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti as a couple grinding through fertility treatment and a fraught almost-adoption. Brutally funny about how badly people want a baby and what it costs them.
But The infertility material is unglamorous and specific — rough going if that subject is currently too close to home.
Please Give2010no page yet
Nicole Holofcener's specialty: prickly, guilt-ridden New Yorkers behaving imperfectly toward the people they love. Same appetite for adults who are decent and selfish in the same breath.
But Very talky and low-stakes by design — nothing much happens except people quietly failing each other.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Stories We Tell2012
Both hinge on a child's discovery of their real biological father and what that does to the people who raised them — one invented, one devastatingly true.
Sarah Polley's documentary about discovering her own biological father is the true, stranger cousin of this film's premise — same ache of paternity as mystery, same question of who counts as family.
But It's a real family excavated on camera, not a scripted comfort — the intimacy can feel almost intrusive.

More like this (8)
The Squid and the Whale2005
A divorce told through the eyes of the kids caught in the middle, with the same unsparing honesty about parents who are brilliant, selfish, and human all at once.
But Colder and more acidic — there's less warmth here to cushion the family dysfunction.

Little Miss Sunshine2006
A family falling apart and somehow holding together on a road trip, with the same balance of genuine dysfunction and genuine love that never tips into either cynicism or sentimentality.
But Broader and more whimsical — the indie-quirk stylings have aged unevenly for some viewers.

American Beauty1999
The original modern-marriage-in-crisis suburban drama, sharp about the lies couples tell themselves and the kids watching it happen.
But Its smugness and sexual politics play very differently now than they did on release.

Captain Fantastic2016
Another film about kids raised outside convention, forced to reckon with the wider world and the imperfect adults who raised them that way.
But More sentimental and speechy than Kids — it wears its heart much further out on its sleeve.

This Is 402012no page yet
A marriage past its first bloom, bickering and tender in equal measure, with the same instinct for finding comedy in real domestic exhaustion.
But Baggier and more indulgent — scenes run long and the laughs are more scattershot.
Boyhood2014
A quieter, longer meditation on family as something that keeps reshaping itself over years, with parents who are flawed but trying.
But Nearly three hours with no real plot — a patience test dressed up as an experiment.

Scenes from a Marriage2021
Same subject underneath the comedy: a marriage tested by an outside attraction, and the unglamorous, unresolved work of staying together anyway.
Bergman's six-part Swedish miniseries strips a marriage down to two people talking in rooms, dissecting infidelity, resentment and love with a bluntness that still stings decades later.
But Long, subtitled, and almost entirely dialogue — a very different pace and a much colder emotional register.

The Birdcage1996
Both put a same-sex parented family under pressure from an intruding outsider, but where Kids plays it as quiet drama, this plays the identical anxiety as full-throttle comedy.
A gay couple's household collides with an outside family in this broad, big-hearted farce — same DNA of unconventional parents defending their family, played for maximum laughs instead of naturalism.
But Loud, theatrical, and dated in places — nothing like the understated realism you came in expecting.

People
Cast
Julianne MooreJules
Mark RuffaloPaul
Mia WasikowskaJoni
Josh HutchersonLaser
Yaya DaCostaTanya
Kunal SharmaJai
Eddie HassellClay
Zosia MametSasha
Joaquín GarridoLuis
Rebecca Lawrence LevyBrooke
Lisa EisnerStella
Directing
- Lisa CholodenkoDirector
Writing
- Lisa CholodenkoWriter
- Stuart BlumbergWriter
Production
- Laura RosenthalCasting
- Bergen SwansonCo-Producer
- Camille MoreauCo-Producer
- Charles E. Bush Jr.Co-Producer
- Joel NewtonCo-Producer
- Laura RosenthalCo-Producer
- Todd J. LabarowskiCo-Producer
- Andy SawyerExecutive Producer
- Anne O'SheaExecutive Producer
- Christy Scott CashmanExecutive Producer
- Galt NiederhofferExecutive Producer
- J. Todd HarrisExecutive Producer
- Neil KatzExecutive Producer
- Riva MarkerExecutive Producer
- Ron SteinExecutive Producer
- Steven SaxtonExecutive Producer
- Celine RattrayProducer
- Daniela Taplin LundbergProducer
- Gary GilbertProducer
- Jeffrey Kusama-HinteProducer
- Jordan HorowitzProducer
- Phillippe HellmannProducer
Recommended by
Boyhood, Marriage Story, Beginners, Little Children, Disobedience, The Descendants