Jake (Nick Kroll) is one such adult. When we first meet him, he is celebrating in high style his new start-up company, which promises a hot new tech product, a pair of sleek augmented reality glasses (much like Google Glass). Unfortunately, before the party has ended he discovers that his manufacturer has screwed up, thus sinking the project and losing millions of dollars—both his own and his many investors, all of whom now despise him. Broke, rejected, and dejected, Jake does the truly adult thing: He tucks his tail between his legs, gets on a train, and shows up unexpectedly on the Long Island doorstep of his sister, Justine (Rose Byrne), who lives in their childhood home with her husband Danny (Bobby Cannavale) and their 3-year-old son Teddy (Caleb and Matthew Paddock). Justine and Danny allow Jake to crash with them for a few months while he gets his life back in order, with the expectation that he will work during the day as Teddy’s nanny, a responsibility for which he is humorously ill-equipped.

On the surface, it would seem that Jake and Justine are meant to be opposites, with him being the case of arrested development still trying to “find himself” and she being the exemplar of mature, family-oriented adulthood. Jake has been allowed to go out into the world and make his way, while Justine has had to put her dreams on hold to take care of things at home. He is narcissism incarnate, and she is sacrifice incarnate. And, in some respects, that’s all true, but as polished as she looks on the surface, Justine is still struggling with the weight of maturity, as is Danny. It is not incidental that both Jake and Justine never learned to swim as children, so when they take Teddy to swim classes together they bicker over who will have to get in the pool with him. Maturity can be a scary thing.

As is typical in such stories, there are lingering resentments and old wounds that are reopened when the siblings are unexpectedly reunited, but it works because Kroll and Byrne develop a real chemistry; they feel like people who have grown up together, but have gone their separate ways and lost whatever connection they once had. Kroll, who is best known for his work on television in Parks & Recreation and The Kroll Show, is quite good at displaying annoyance, exasperation, and incredulity without becoming thoroughly unpleasant himself, a problem that Charlize Theron had in playing a similar role in Jason Reitman’s Young Adult (2011). Byrne, still best remembered as the upper-crust control freak in Bridesmaids (2011), evinces a quiet sense of resolve that seems to conflict with her lapses of judgment, such as allowing herself to drink with a high school student she is supposed to be career counseling and her somewhat pathetic attempt to reclaim a night of wild youth by overdressing and going to a bar with Jake.

Written by Jeff Cox (Blades of Glory) and Liz Flahive (Nurse Jackie) from a story suggested by Kroll and directed by Ross Katz, a former producer who has worked with Todd Fields (In the Bedroom) and Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette), Adult Beginners has all the trappings of a generic indie coming-home heart-warmer, but one of the best things I can say about it is that it manages to sidestep or at least complicate most of its clichés, starting with the idea that Jake will be somehow “redeemed” by his interactions with Teddy—a man-child becoming an adult by taking care of an actual child. He and Teddy do have some meaningful moments, and we get the sense that the experience of being truly responsible for another human being has an impact on Jake, but it’s not that one-dimensional. He is transformed as much by his interactions with Justine and witnessing her own struggles with adulthood, as well as conflict with Danny when he accidentally discovers something about his brother-in-law that causes him to reflect on his own dishonesty and willingness to use others. His fling with another nanny (Paula Garcés) has a similar impact, as he suddenly finds himself the object, rather than the user. Those reversals bring a sense of freshness to Adult Beginners’ otherwise familiar beats, giving it a sense of life and depth that works in tandem with its funnier moments.

Copyright ©2015 James Kendrick

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