Our Son: A Review

OUR SON

Luke Evans is a rarity in Hollywood. He is an openly gay actor who for the most part has stayed clear of playing gay characters. He tends to play characters who are either straight (such as his turns in Dracula Untold and the live-action Beauty and the Beast) or where his sexuality is unimportant (such as in the live-action Pinocchio or Fast & Furious 6). As such, Our Son is outside Evans' normal filmography. Perhaps Our Son is well-intentioned. I just would have liked it to have been better.

After thirteen years of marriage, book publisher Nicky (Evans) and his partner, former actor and now stay-at-home dad Gabriel (Billy Porter) are finding themselves drifting apart. They have different parental philosophies when it comes to raising Owen (Christopher Woodley), who is Nicky's biological son but whose surrogate mother is black. Poppa Gabriel is very nurturing, while Daddy Nicky is stricter when it comes to things like letting Owen sleep in their bed despite him being eight. 

Now things come to a head when Gabriel confesses two things: desire for another man and how he no longer loves Nicky. They openly though calmly fight about Owen in front of their friends, including lesbian couple Claire (Liza J. Bennett) and Judith (Gabby Beans), who are about to have a gender-neutral baby of their own. Nicky now has to try and raise Owen by himself, no easy feat given how he has pretty much shunted child raising to his spouse Gabriel. For his part, Gabriel has no real way of supporting Owen, though there is the possibility of working for their mutual friend Matthew (Andrew Rannells). 

As the custody battle between Gabriel and Nicky begins, both men struggle with their feelings of whether he will be the best choice for Owen or not. Nicky also begins exploring the world of clubs again (Gabriel already having strayed into a brief extramarital affair with the object of his desires). Who will end up having primary custody of Our Son, Owen?

Our Son is the gay version of Kramer vs. Kramer, with Luke Evans playing the Dustin Hoffman part and Billy Porter playing the Meryl Streep part. There are so many similarities between Our Son and Kramer vs. Kramer that one is within his/her rights to think that screenwriters Peter Nickowitz and Bill Oliver (who also directed) watched the latter and took notes to see how to adapt it to a gay setting. I am not saying that Nickowitz or Oliver actually or literally stole from or used anything from Kramer vs. Kramer. 

I am saying that for me, there were scenes and situations from Our Son that reminded me of Kramer vs. Kramer. Daddy Nicky, like Dustin Hoffman's Ted, cannot make breakfast for his son. Poppa Gabriel, like Meryl Streep's Joanna, leaves his spouse because he does not love him anymore. Owen, like Justin Henry's Billy, can be a bit insufferable where I thought he would be better off being put up for adoption. To be fair, Our Son makes both Nicky and Gabriel at times so awful as parents that Owen would probably be better off being raised by Isabella (Nuala Cleary), the very sensible and patient babysitter who comes around every so often.

Perhaps I am being too harsh, as Our Son makes the case that Nicky is a pretty clueless and absentee dad, and Gabriel is almost the perfect mother. Nicky is not, for example, overly devastated that Gabriel confesses to desiring another man. He seems more perturbed that Gabriel did not ask permission to pursue an extramarital affair, suggesting to the audience that they have an open marriage. That, at least, was the impression that I was left with, which is a very bizarre one. 

In terms of performances, Our Son had me at times laughing at what were meant as serious, somber moments. A fight between Nicky and Gabriel which was meant to be devasting in the emotional revealing had me chuckling. I think it has to do with how earnest everyone was playing the scene. Despite everyone's best efforts, it came across as parody. More laughable was when Judith was giving birth to their gender-neutral Sheila. Granted, I have never witnessed or given birth myself, but Judith's facial expressions coupled with her stating, "IT HURTS!" made me wonder why either of them did not think that it would not. Haven't they invented drugs to dull the pain? 

I think highly of Luke Evans, who is very skilled in almost everything that I have seen. I think that he gave it his all in Our Son. It is unfortunate that the end result made Nicky into a total wimp. Evans was nothing but weepy and forlorn in the film. I understand that Nicky was upset about the prospect of losing Owen, but he was not that involved prior to the breakup. As such, his reaction seems to be more out of character. He was even a bit bitchy when the subject of Gabriel's career came up, dismissing his former spouse's claims of an acting career as being nothing but upstate summer stock. The only thing that I got out of Evans' performance was my surprise at how tatted Evans is. 

This is, I think, one of the first projects where I have seen Billy Porter take a major role (I remember him from 80 for Brady, which was traumatic enough without him). I think he too tried to match what he thought of as a major drama. It never worked for me, though, as if Porter was trying too hard. 

I will say that I thought Woodley as Owen did a decent job, even if at times he came across as whiny and obnoxious. 

"It must be hard fighting for the right to marry and then just ending up in a divorce court like everyone else", Nicky's nephew Max (Will Coombs) essentially scolds his uncle when Nicky finally tells his religious family about the breakup. I am perplexed on the thinking that, once same-sex marriage was legalized, such relationships would be permanent and immune from things like a breakup and now custody battles when only one parent could be biologically related to a child. I think Our Son came with noble and sincere efforts. It just did not work for me. 

DECISION: D-