Year: 2024 (UK Digital Release 2025)
Director: Heather Graham
Screenplay: Heather Graham
Starring: Heather Graham, John Brotherton, Andrea Savage,
Michael Gross, Julie Halston, Thomas Lennon, Julia Stiles.
With films no longer being the centrepiece of media
consumption, I was surprised that I now miss genres that I’ve usually been more
dismissive of. Romantic comedies are one of those genres. Once a staple of the
film calendar, rom-coms feel rarer these days, with many relegated to online
streaming platforms. Such films have not been completely eradicated.
However, Google a list of recent romantic comedy titles and bear witness to
rather deary, forgettable titles.
Enter Chosen Family; a frizzy but mostly harmless rom-com,
with the main draw being Heather Graham operating as lead, writer and director
of the whole shebang. The tone found in Chosen Family is what many would expect
from its director. It’s a sugar bubble of a movie. Sweet and light but with not
much else inside. It’s never afraid to look a bit silly. However, this
leads to problems in the third act when the narrative wants to say somewhat
serious things. Late on, the film delivers a plot revelation which hits a bum
note, asking the audience to take on board a deeply emotional incident in a
movie that was at first far more invested with Graham performing an
inappropriate dance-off with a child. Films like Chosen Family inadvertently
highlight how much of a deft touch directors have with their material.
Chosen Family is well-intentioned in what it’s trying to do.
Graham plays a people-pleasing yoga instructor, Ann. A woman whose romantic life
is in the trash heap, while her family pepper her with their mini
manipulations. Her solace lies with her friends who stand by her through thick
and thin. Even when the group have suspicions that the handsome date they’ve
picked for her (John Brotherton) may have a hidden flaw. For the most part,
Chosen Family has all the markings of a live, laugh, love motivational slogan
come to life.
What’s interesting is what Graham has taken from a storied
career as an actress, with much of the film managing to have the vibe of her
multi-episode stint as Dr Molly Clock on Scrubs. Chosen Family bounces along
with a Sitcom energy, packing a truckload of typical plot points and dialogue
that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 30-minute, 22-episode season of a show
called “Something Breezy” or similar. The film’s form compounds the televisual
aspect, with Graham using repetitive drone establishing shots and standardly
blocked compositions as main visual decisions. Nothing is that bad, but not
much is particularly striking. Although enough of it is passingly distracting.
It helps if the viewer still has one foot stuck in the early
00s. Chosen Family is a film in which Graham’s hapless yoga instructor is doing
enough to live comfortably as a rather basic gym teacher (the film nearly
always has her starting and finishing lessons but rarely having her do anything
strenuous), yet seems astonished at the idea of broadening her appeal using
social media. Not everyone can establish popularity on internet platforms, but
Graham’s character is way out of the loop. So much so that the film uses the
old “she accidentally posted too much on socials” as an inciting incident for
the film. There’s a naivety here, as the world is now almost trained to post
every little opinion of themselves with impunity. Graham’s character is only
just past the ideal age for the social media platforms the film recognises.
This makes Chosen Family feel behind the curve with certain things. Don’t
believe me? The black landlord who urges Ann to go on socials is a great
example. There’s a tiredness in the stereotype that leans more towards a
sort of innocence than any malice.
This weird innocence is part of Chosen Family’s charm.
Ann is an amalgamation of what I think of Graham in a few of the roles I’ve
seen her in. Naïve, attractive, yet strangely passive and happy-go-lucky. She’s
never been a go-to actress for heavy, poignant roles, which is why some of
Chosen Family feels odd late on. But her on-screen presence is pleasant enough
to watch, even though much of the film seems to involve Ann asking her friends, “What do I do now?”. A sizable chunk of Chosen Family stems from autobiographical
strands of Graham’s life, so it is interesting to see how Ann is conceived as a
character, even though a lot around her is half-baked.
It should be said, however, that Graham picks a seasoned cast
of character actors who all have their appeal. She also has the guts to give
certain plot strands on slightly more melancholic terms than expected, with the
film’s obvious title being particularly on point. It’s also nice to see Julia
Stiles in the role of Ann’s substance-abusing sister, despite being sidelined for
long stretches of the movie. But this seems to be the case for much of Chosen
Family. Graham scatters a broadly amusing variety of raw materials, but nothing
fits together well enough to make anything solid.
Chosen Family is available on Digital Release from 21st April.
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