by Robert Bouffard, Editor
Sibling relationships are unique. You grow up with people who may or may not be similar to you, but either way, you spend a large chunk of your pre-adult years with them. So despite having a lot of similar experiences, you develop different perspectives on those experiences. Suffice it to say, it’s complicated.
Writer/Director Dustin Guy Defa’s The Adults dives into the sibling relationships of Eric (Michael Cera), Rachel (Hannah Gross), and Maggie (Sophia Lillis), and it uses their singular connection to get the viewer to buy in. Eric is visiting home, where his two sisters still live, for the first time in a few years, and his now-selfish demeanor, along with Rachel’s distance, causes a lot of buried trauma to come to the top. And the siblings cope with this trauma in ways that only the three of them can.
Instead of talking to each other like “normal people” might, Eric, Rachel, and Maggie can only really communicate their feelings through characters they developed as children, or who exist in the real world. Whether it’s an over-the-top Cockney accent, Marge Simpson, Tony Soprano, or a three-person dance number, the siblings always revert back to a childish state when anything that could be remotely emotionally destructive comes up. They’re bad at communicating, but at the same time, it’s good that they are communicating at all.
How you view the siblings’ interactions will likely be colored by your own point of view, or even, more specifically, your relationship with your own siblings. There’s a valid pessimistic reading of this film — Eric only continues to extend his stay at home because of a nightly poker game at which he’s selfishly determined to show how good of a player he is (which is nicely reminiscent of Molly’s Game’s Player X, one of the first times Cera was seen as something other than a quirky, relatable teen character). But if you take the opposite point of view, which I’d at least like to do, maybe he only stays to play poker because he subconsciously wants to fix what’s broken about his relationship with his sisters.
It’s a credit to Cera’s needle-threading performance that both of these readings are credible. He has those good guy qualities that made us fall in love with him in Superbad and Juno, (and to a lesser, cousin-crushing extent in Arrested Development), but as he’s gotten older, he’s been able to develop a more dickish, Scott Pilgrim-esque quality, and along with his distant demeanor, he balances them both in The Adults behind his 17 extra layers of jokes, characters, songs, and dances.
Eric obviously deeply loves and misses his sisters, even if he doesn’t completely know it or want to admit it, but their perspective on him is quite different. Rachel has been depressed since their mother died, and it’s changed her. Instead of loving with an edge, she’s now cynical, and as Eric puts it, just mean. The showy performance from the more well-known Cera will get more attention, but Gross’ is quietly just as good. I always appreciate a performance where most of it happens under the surface… until it doesn’t, and that’s what works about Gross’.
Lillis, meanwhile, is not really given much to do besides attempt to act as the mediator of the stronger personalities of her two older siblings. Maggie has some of her own struggles, but they’re not really explored too much. This holds the movie back a bit, as in name it’s meant to be an ensemble piece between the three siblings, but only Cera really gets a chance to shine, with Gross having her moments.
What The Adults does best is to plop you in a moment in time for three very specific people. Their internal lives feel real and their external relationships feel fully lived in. With such a deep understanding and investment from the director and main cast, it’s easy to do the same from the perspective of the audience.
Rating: Liked It
The Adults is currently available on VOD
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