The Family Fang (2016)

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Bad-parent movies are a popular comedy genre that laughs at parents for not being perfect. The drama, thriller or horror versions are more about exploring the dark side of family life and the damage that adults inflict on their young. The offbeat satire The Family Fang (2015) has its funny moments but this is not a comedy. It is a portrait of psychological abuse conducted by parents in the name of art with sinister undercurrents always beneath the surface.Internationally renowned Caleb Fang (Christopher Walken) and his wife Camille (Maryanne Plunkett) are performance artists dedicated to disrupting the conventions of normality. They stage impromptu happenings in public places simply to witness the sublime beauty of the resulting chaos. Their children Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Jason Bateman) have been used as performance props since they were born and their adult lives bear the scars of parenting based on artifice and deception. As youngsters they busked a song "kill all parents so you can keep living" just to get crowd reactions, but they could not foresee the truth in the lyrics nor how their parents would control their lives into adulthood.The story unfolds backwards with Annie and Baxter at their parent's empty home searching for clues to explain the sudden and violent of disappearance of Caleb and Camille. Police believe the worst but the siblings believe it is just another stunt. While trawling through videos and other memorabilia, they see their lives paraded before them. They realise that they have always been exploited and are victims of unresolved psychological abuse. Through flashbacks, they can see Caleb as a violent personality and Camille as meekly compliant while family gatherings were tension-filled events under Caleb's domination. When the siblings question the value of the performances the reaction is pure menace.This is a dysfunctional family in both obvious and implied ways, and the film keeps us guessing whether the knotted ball can ever be untangled. The four characters are well defined with strong and believable performances, and the conflicts between young and old are frighteningly recognisable as the kind of things that happen in both normal and transgressive families. When Caleb says "parents damage kids, so what" it sends a shiver down your spine to realise that some people are not psychologically equipped to be parents. Annie and Baxter must confront the fact that letting their parents go may the only way to grow up. This is an original take on an age-old story that is also provocative and engaging.

Baxter (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Nicole Kidman) Fang are siblings of a very special family who made fame for themselves in the kids' youth as for their public performances of vanguard art which consisted in a rupture of social and everyday standards. The whole family comes back together and Annie and Baxter and to confront their parents and their unusual past to figure out their now unbalanced life.I am a deep lover of cinema, every time I go to the theater I genuinely go there, no matter what the movie, to appreciate cinema and even when watching bad films I always try to get something out of it. Unfortunately and most sadly, every now and then a film comes along where I just find myself lost for much to say. Being a big Jason Bateman fan myself it really pains me to say that I really hated this film and despite the fact that I saw Bateman making the film he wanted I just could not bear to stay with this film.Contrary to one of the film I most hated in recent times like "Serena" (2014), I cannot say this film ever really got me annoyed or unnerved for its content. It is not one of those films where it happens that you get talked down which for me are the worst kind of experiences that get me angry and offended. "The Family Fang" is simply a deeply disorienting film from tone to script to editing to, even if I don't like to talk about elements that are not part of the film, its poster.What basically makes this film unsettlingly weird from the start and on which the rest it builds on is the basic premise. The idea of these performances by the family. I had no fuc*ing idea what the hell was going on. The film repeatedly reflects this sentiment the audience will probably feel with extras in it, but this doesn't suddenly make it tangible and understandable, least of all it does give it the sense it desperately needs.You are led to believe that offending two kids in public, making them kiss through a play despite the fact that they are siblings or assaulting a chicken sandwich stand should be these great polarizing pieces of vanguard-modern art. The film asks you to believe that there is a conflict there, that this has an effect on the world and on our characters, but since the dynamic is never nor convincing nor interesting it simply has no effect whatsoever on the film.So then you are guided through a journey into a dysfunctional family where you feel absolutely lost and the film's style certainly doesn't help. The editing is disjointed and there are sequences played with classical music which I still have to figure out the reason for. The shots moreover are all over the place, a mishmash of Wes Anderson's geometrical style, with standard coverage and a spice of weird tracking shots which when added together just resulted in a truly chaotic experience for the mind in the first place, then when I just had given up on the film I kept being bewildered.Moreover, the drama, certainly because of all of the above lackluster elements, but mostly because of a murky script, is truly boring. The conflict doesn't exist, you don't't understand what this characters' problems are, the focus is never pulled on something and it comes out as this generic family drama that has absolutely no emotional investment. The plot turns are the only thing that apparently come close to feeling exciting, then what is truly under them is unveiled and I frowned deeper into my seat for that."The Family Fang" is a film that really got on the wrong side of me. As a film lover I had almost nothing to take away from it and that really makes me sad because understand the effort that goes into filmmaking and whilst Bateman and his fellow filmmakers might be proud of what they have made and have every right in the world to be so, I personally found myself truly and unluckily wanting to escape the theater.

Does art truly imitate life or is it the other way around? Two adult siblings trapped in career limbo, struggle to overcome the scars of their deeply dysfunctional childhood until they find themselves once again reunited with their eccentric, narcissistic and woefully unpredictable parents. The acting is good and the casting superb. This is an interesting different, thought provoking film that draws you in and doesn't let go that easily. It's the kind of film that you want to talk about after you've seen it. Excellent and disturbingly entertaining. Will definitely recommend.

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