Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman Unconvincingly Fall for Each Other in Confused A Family Affair

Joey King is a firecracker. In Netflix’s rom-com A Family Affair, her outsized charm and effortless comedic chops easily steals focus from Zac Efron’s abs and AMC Theaters’ Queen of Cinema Nicole Kidman. As the sassy assistant to Efron’s Hollywood himbo Chris Cole and the daughter of Kidman’s award-winning author Brooke Harwood, King’s Zara Ford has that typically thankless role of playing chipper support to the bigger-name leads. Except, King immediately pulls away from the trio as the one actor trying to breathe life into this drippy May-December/coming-of-age/mother-daughter story.
The premise of A Family Affair is essentially a lesser version of Anne Hathaway’s recent Prime Video rom-com, The Idea of You, just remixed with a younger actor instead of a singer, an older daughter in the middle and an absence of chemistry between the lovers. Zara is the harried 24-year-old daughter of a massively successful and ethereally gorgeous mother (and widow), Brooke. As the assistant to action star Cole, Zara gets to be an agony aunt for his shallow insecurities, buy his groceries and help him execute his tried and true “nice guy” break-up routine when he’s ready to move on to greener pastures. She stays because he’s promised her a producer’s title at his company, and she has no problem being brutally honest to his face, which Chris sort of appreciates.
However, his latest temper tantrum is a bridge too far, so Zara quits without a fallback. She lives with her mom, doesn’t really have a skillset to do much else and she still wants to produce. Chris soon realizes he needs his favorite doormat, so he shows up unannounced at Brooke’s home and asks to wait for Zara. Within minutes, tequila shots are had, tepid flirting is attempted and he and Brooke are all over each other. Of course, Zara arrives and is appalled to witness their sin—a rift is formed.
Thankfully, screenwriter Carrie Solomon nixes any hint of a love triangle, instead pursuing the “mom betrayed me with my jerk ex-boss” and the May-December romance avenues. However, Frankenstein-ing all of these divergent stories into something tonally cohesive is way beyond the control of Solomon or director Richard LaGravenese. King commits to remaining in a comedy. Efron and Kidman, meanwhile, veer off into a more serious romance as Chris connects to Brooke, and Brooke allows herself to give into his advances after an 11-year drought of single-minded single-parenting.