Adult Life Skills
Nothing quickens the process of moving on with your dead-end life faster than getting stuck caring for a troubled 8-year-old boy.
Cast of Characters:
Anna – Jodie Whittaker
Marion – Lorraine Ashbourne
Brendan – Brett Goldstein
Fiona – Rachel Deering
Jean – Eileen Davies
Alice – Alice Lowe
The Snorkeler – Edward Hogg
Clint – Ozzy Myers
Director – Rachel Tunnard
Screenplay – Rachel Tunnard
Producer – Michael Berliner
Not Rated
Ever since the death of her twin brother, Anna (Jodie Whittaker) has found herself stuck in a rut with her life. She’s about to turn thirty, still living with her mother Marion (Lorraine Ashbourne) – more specifically, her mother’s backyard shed – makes thumb puppet videos during her free time and often wonders why the suffragettes even bothered. Fed up with her daughter’s hermit-like lifestyle, Marion gives Anna an ultimatum – clean herself up, move out of the shed and get a place of her own. Naturally, Anna stubbornly stands her ground against her mom’s orders, but a connection with a troubled 8-year-old boy, Clint (Ozzy Myers), who lives nearby could be what’s needed to crack her self-imposed isolative shell.
Based on feature debut director Rachel Tunnard’s 2014 short film Emotional Fusebox, Adult Life Skills follows down the familiar story path of arrested development, a cinematic premise as old as time. The different spin on the formula here, though, is that the main character is female, when, more often than not, this type of dramedy tends to focus on male characters. One of the few past exceptions that focused on female arrested development is Jason Reitman’s underrated Young Adult starring Academy Award winner Charlize Theron. This time around, we’re pretty much getting Young Adult if it collided into About a Boy.
Though getting its release now in 2019, Adult Life Skills first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival all the way back in early 2016, followed by a small UK release later that summer. There’s a big reason why now, all of a sudden, this film is getting a release here in the States, and that reason is Dr. Who. While Jodie Whittaker had some accomplished credentials to her name prior to joining the hit TV series with Venus and Attack the Block under her belt, it wasn’t until she was cast to play the thirteenth Doctor, first appearing near the end of 2017, that her name became big in the U.S., thereby giving this film greater attention than initially anticipated.
The Good: The best thing Adult Life Skills has to offer is by far Jodie Whittaker’s deeply affecting performance, which tasks the Dr. Who actress with taking a character who at times can be unlikable and selfish and transforming her into someone we can empathize with. Whittaker effectively channels each of Anna’s personality quirks, be it funny, profane, or downright heartbreaking, and manages to do so without skipping a beat, nailing each of the film’s emotional beats, no matter how predictable they may be, with effortless ease. The script may fall just a bit short in painting Anna in a compelling light, though sympathetic nonetheless, yet Whittaker picks up the flack and injects her stubborn protagonist’s struggle to grieve with the nuance it needs.
Of the supporting cast, the two standouts are Lorraine Ashbourne and Ozzy Myers as Anna’s mother and the young boy Anna takes under her wing, respectively. Ashbourne perfectly captures the exasperation of a mother who’s at wit’s end in dealing with her near-thirty-year-old daughter’s obstinate behavior. We certainly sympathize with Anna, but at the same time, Marion’s frustrations with her daughter are most definitely justifiable; in fact, much of the time, she’s the voice of reason. Ozzy Myers, essentially playing the Nicholas Hoult role opposite Whittaker’s Hugh Grant, turns in a fine debut performance as the Westerns-loving Clint. The relationship between him and Anna is one of the film’s more compelling components, thanks mainly to the genuinely heartfelt, though sometimes rocky, rapport shared by Myers and Whittaker (in one of the film’s more heavier scenes, one line delivered from Anna to Clint hits with an effectively devastating punch).
Eileen Davies deserves a runner-up mention as the wise-quipping grandmother, who’s playing a very cliché type that we’ve seen in countless other family dramedies, but still ably lands the comic zingers aimed at Whittaker (one particularly funny moment has her recalling a past, ugly haircut of Anna’s that possibly may have put her gender in question).
There’s no denying Rachel Tunnard’s Wes Anderson influence here. Adult Life Skills sometimes reaches levels of quirky that would make even the most whimsical Wes Anderson adventure feel like Ingmar Bergman on Xanax. For sure, this film shamelessly wears its quirkiness on its sleeves, yet while Tunnard isn’t at Anderson’s level and shows room for improvement, she does deserve credit for steadily keeping things on track between the film’s lighter moments of whimsy and the more tragic subjects surrounding Anna’s personal life. A key subplot featuring conversations Anna shares with a nearby Snorkeler best showcases Tunnard’s grasp of tonal balance. It’s those moments where the film is at its quirkiest while simultaneously exploring themes of death and the nature of grief without feeling tonally off or turning mawkish.
The Bad: As I just mentioned, Adult Life Skills wears its quirkiness on its sleeve… for better or worse. There’s a lot of familiar terrain being covered here, from the Wes Anderson vibes to the stereotypical indie acoustic pop-folk score that’s been heard in a million other indie dramedies. That’s not to say it’s a total buzzkill on the film. Tunnard draws great work from her cast and shows much potential herself as a filmmaker, but a little more subtlety in spots would’ve been nice, that’s all.
Then again, as Trent Walker from Swingers would remind us, “Everybody steals from everybody. That’s Hollywood.”
Though the performances are uniformly good (Whittaker has great besties-like chemistry with Rachel Deering, who plays her bubbly BFF Fiona), most of the supporting characters, save a few, are one-dimensional types that feel more like devices for Anna’s arc than fully-realized characters themselves. Not to take anything away from Brett Goldstein’s effort, who gives an amusing turn as Anna’s socially awkward real estate agent/potential boyfriend, but there isn’t much to the relationship subplot he shares with Whittaker, which ultimately comes off like an obligatory need to give the protagonist a love interest. There’s glimmers of potential in their relationship, and it makes sense that an oddball like Brendan would easily connect with an oddball like Anna, but the romantic angle that’s pushed on the two feels unnecessarily wedged-in.
The Ugly: Just a friendly reminder that microwaves are in no way an acceptable substitute for drying your underwire bras.
Consensus: Sweet and eccentric without ever falling into mawkish sentimentality, Adult Life Skills covers familiar dramedy terrain, but manages to stand on its own thanks to Rachel Tunnard’s quirky story and, above all else, a wonderfully endearing lead turn from Jodie Whittaker.
Silver Screen Fanatic’s Verdict: I give Adult Life Skills a B+ (★★★).
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