‘Adulthood’ Movie Review: A Dark Comedy That’s Neither Dark Enough Nor Funny Enough
Photo from Republic Pictures
From Jeremy Kibler
Digging up a 30-year-old family secret is just the start of good people making desperately bad moves in Adulthood, a feeble black comedy with neo-noir ingredients. Best known as the actor who played Bill to Keanu Reeves’ Ted, Alex Winter is no stranger to behind-the-camera filmmaking (directing documentaries mostly), particularly his inventively weird 1993 co-directing debut Freaked. Unfortunately, his capable direction this time around can’t really bring much life to a conceptually twisted yet toothless script by Michael M.B. Galvin.
After their mother suffers a stroke, estranged brother Noah (Josh Gad) and sister Meg (Kaya Scodelario) have a lot of hard decisions to make. They go back to her childhood home to clean stuff out, and when going to the moldy basement, they find a dead body (or, really, the skeleton of a body) in the wall. Disposing the body in a swamp is just the beginning, as a friendly police officer (Camille James) immediately begins an investigation the next day. Violence begets violence as Noah and Meg make one bad decision after another, all for the sake of keeping their family name untainted.
There’s really not much to see in Adulthood, a dark comedy that is neither dark enough nor funny enough. The sibling characters do at least have jobs and feel like recognizable human beings, even if one remains consistently unappealing and the other becomes less and less root-worthy. Noah is a struggling screenwriter hoping to collect his inheritance so he can just smoke pot (and watch porn) all day, while Meg is used to being the more responsible one, having to run a small business and also constantly worrying about her youngest child with diabetes.
Kaya Scodelario tries her best to bring authenticity to the dour, anxiety-ridden Meg, and Josh God seems to be playing Noah as just defiantly pathetic and unlikable. Although best known for his adorable voice performance as Olaf in the Frozen movies, Gad isn’t entirely new to playing a jerk or a loser; his Noah gets to be a twofer. Billie Lourd gets to have some fun as the dipshit siblings’ mother’s opportunistic aide, and Anthony Carrigan brings an oddball, live-wire energy to the part of brace-faced, sword-collecting cousin Bodie.
There is a sad undercurrent to a film about caregiving just to keep a dark family secret buried, but it stops giving us anyone to genuinely care about. Instead, Adulthood just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Rating: 1.5/5
Adulthood is currently available to stream.
