The Family Fang (2016)

The book wasn’t great, but it was a heckuva a lot better than this.

Performance-artist parents incorporate their children into their pieces. Performance examples: a bank stick-up where a kid’s the robber and a seemingly innocent bystander is shot; child buskers who are booed by listening adults. Once the children grow up they choose to extricate themselves from their weird childhood but life, as it always does, has different plans and they’re soon sucked back into the Fang Family dysfunction.

If only the dysfunction were in any way interesting. The vibe is too low-key and suffers more than I would’ve thought possible from the severe miscasting of Nicole Kidman as the grown daughter. She could neither keep her Australian accent in check nor my interest on the screen.

C-