Review: The Skeleton Twins

When I know I’m going to see a movie myself, I stay away from reviews as much as I can. Partly it’s because I don’t want my opinion to be shaded by what someone else says or writes, and partly it’s because I don’t want any surprises given away. If a movie has worked hard enough to do something original or unusual, I want to experience it firsthand.

But some films you can’t escape hearing about before seeing them, and for better or for worse, the things you hear affect what you think when you finally do see it.

The Skeleton Twins is a small, independent film that came out last year. It won Best Screenplay at the Sundance Film Festival and had a limited release in theaters. It’s now on DVD for those of us who don’t live close enough to a theater that would show a small Sundance winner. The movie received a lot of critical praise and ended up on several “best of” lists for 2014. I was excited to finally see if it lived up to all the hype.

It’s impossible for me to tell whether I would have liked it more if I hadn’t heard all the praise. All I know is that when I finally did see it, I wasn’t terribly impressed.

Independent films, especially Sundance movies, have a reputation for being sort of the same – a depressed loner from a marginalized group wanders around life wondering why he or she doesn’t fit in with the rest of the vain, vacuous world. There are b-list actors, found sets, divorce, suicide, bad parents, lots of cursing, and usually at least one big cathartic shouting match. Sometimes this formula produces joyful or at least skillful results as in Little Miss Sunshine or Smoke Signals. But sometimes you just get airless, joyless slogs through Life-Suckville.

The Skeleton Twins hits somewhere in between those two poles. It’s the story of fraternal twins, Milo and Maggie, who are both lost and struggling with soul-deep depression as they deal with the repercussions of a traumatic childhood. Milo, a failed actor who has just broken up with his boyfriend, starts the movie off cutting his wrists open in a bathtub. His sister Maggie, married to a good man she can’t manage to be faithful to, comes to help her brother even though the two haven’t spoken in ten years. Their father committed suicide by jumping off a bridge when the twins were 14 and their mother emotionally abandoned them from that point forward. As Milo and Maggie try to get some equilibrium, they do damage to each other and those around them. There are plenty of shots of the two of them blankly staring off into the distance, obviously contemplating the hopelessness of their lives. 

 

It’s a pretty standard, bleak “what do I do with my screwed up life” kind of movie. The element that keeps it from being bleak AND boring is the cast. Saturday Night Live veterans Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader play the twins and manage an affecting emotional realism. Their easy chemistry with one another makes them believable siblings whether they are quietly trying to reignite their sputtering friendship after ten years apart or goofing around like adolescents when they both get high on nitrous oxide at the dentist’s office where Maggie works. They’re believable as real people, they just aren’t given much that’s interesting to do. The resolution to their conflict comes too predictably and simply lets them and the viewer of the hook.

 

One stand out performance is given by Luke Wilson who, despite his roles in bigger Hollywood movies, has remained a staple in small films like this. He plays Maggie’s loving, slightly dim husband who just loves her and wants the best for his wife, even if he can’t figure her out. Wilson plays affectionate, befuddled, enthusiastic, and hopeful all at once in a mostly thankless role. 

The Skeleton Twins isn’t bad – it just isn’t as good as I hoped it would be. If you like family dramas with the occasional shot of gallows humor, it might be for you. But otherwise, I wouldn’t believe the hype.

This review originally appeared on Q90.1. For more information, go to www.deltabroadcasting.org.