Film review: THE SKELETON TWINS

Warning: spoilers abound.

Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader (Roadside Attractions)

It's not that funny - let's make that clear because the trailer didn't. Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader - who have proven to be among the great comedic actors of their generation on Saturday Night Live - are delivering complex and heartfelt performances in Craig Johnson's The Skeleton Twins. This movie - like its characters - has a complex relationship to laughter. It's true that you want this movie to be funnier - for God's sake, it's Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader! But we understand through Wiig and Hader's characters that joy is slipping, distances have been established, and the past is too wrought with hurt to allow humor in. Yet that humor is the core of their relationship - it allows them to connect to each other in a deep and significant way.

Meet Milo (Bill Hader), a gay actor in LA who's about to slit his own wrists. Meet his sister Maggie (Kriisten Wiig), a dental hygienist whose about to pop a handful of pills 50's-housewife style. Its a race to death and Milo wins it, landing him in the hospital in LA and giving Maggie that phone call. When Maggie arrives at his side, Hader's lack of enthusiasm isn't surprising: they haven't seen each other for 10 years. But at Maggie's insistence, Milo goes to live with her in upstate New York, where they grew up and Maggie still resides.

The first night is a disaster. Milo openly rips into Maggie at the dinner table for settling down in the most clichéd way possible: she has the nice suburban home, the perfect husband named Lance (played perfectly by Luke Wilson) and the intention to get pregnant. Milo can only picture himself in this scenario as the "creepy gay uncle," destined to lurk around as an unhinged and unstable specimen in this doll-house fantasy. When Maggie, in private, asks Milo, "What do you think?" his answer isn't at all what she wants to hear. "I guess I grew up," Maggie counters passive-aggressively, determined to show off how her life turned out better than his. Milo sees right through this; he recognizes those same feelings of self-loathing and repression within himself. Yet he's unable to diagnose and treat the problems that so clearly persist in his life.

Milo's exaggerated, sure. Narcissistic. Perhaps cruel. But he only conceals himself in whatever character he sees fit for the moment: when he walks in his sister's room drunk at one o'clock in the morning, he's the sexual voyeur who wants to shock and provoke. In his private moments. he's the damaged teen attempting to rekindle a sexual romance with his then-teacher (Ty Burrell). And with Lance - his sister's husband - he's acting out the father/son relationship he was stripped of when his father killed himself. Milo's life - like his failed career - is a performance that has reached a conclusion. Milo's struggles with authenticity reflect an inability to connect with anyone in his life.

This is also what is missing from Maggie's life: connection. She falls into an affair when she's presented with the thrill of her young, forbidden fruit of a scuba-diver instructor (Boyd Holbrook). She lies to her husband about being on birth-control. She's obviously not ready for any sort of commitment - her past has taught her distrust the comfortable and secure. Even as it pulls her apart, domesticity calls to her in a way family never did.

Kristen Wiig (Roadside Attractions)

But Maggie and Milo are the antidote to each other even if they're also the source of the poison. The film's best moment comes when Milo entreats Maggie to sing "Nothing's Going to Stop Us Now," exemplifying the chemistry Wiig and Hader are known for having. The scene in the dentist office when they're high on morphine is hilarious and demonstrates how much these characters enjoy each others' company. Another great moment: when Wiig is dressing up Hader for Halloween and we're presented with this mix between Tim Curry in drag and a pristine primma donna. It's recognizable - if you know any gay men, they might just admit they had their older sisters dress them up as girls. Maggie and Milo are reliving their childhoods in these brief moments - the good parts, anyway - because that's where they're happiest. And the script (by Craig Johnson and Mark Helman) renders these scenes essential: without them, we're never able to watch the characters cope with circumstances that have done their best to rid them of all positivity and joy.

The revelations about these characters come out one by one, continuously, though we never get any serious insight in to what type of people Maggie and Milo are. This comes through the other characters they associate with. Never feeling thin or under-developed, the outside characters work to complement the relationship between Maggie and Milo.

The movie's exclusively concerned with their present - the farthest glimpse into their past that we get is with their mother (Joanna Gleason), who comes to Maggie's house at Milo's request. They bond over disliking her: her narcissism, her false positivity, her feigned grace. We learn how awful she is when she reveals she missed Maggie's wedding to attend an "insight retreat." It's extreme but believable, given the circumstances of her husband's suicide and her children's resentment. Maggie and Milo react so strongly against her falseness even as they delude themselves into not dealing with their own problems.

And they have moments where you believe they care deeply about each other. Milo - when he goes to his old teacher's house - sees that he has a son just about his age when they were having the affair. This sends Milo into a drunken stupor where Maggie worriedly comforts him. In one of the most powerful moments of the film, Milo tells us a story about how his childhood bully ended up more successful and happier than him - despite their father's insistence that "those guys peak in high school." It speaks to the moral universe the film lives in where retribution and fate isn't set, where humans must navigate themselves.

Towards the ending, we are no closer to a resolution. Halloween, even as they are in the throes of sibling-bonding, is ruined by the revelation Milo is seeing his old high school teacher once more. Maggie recognizes his delusion - she uses it to attack him because she's convinced that this is how he'll learn. Milo does the same thing when he reveals to Lance she's been taking birth control. They're helping each other make hard decisions against their will. Maggie does admit to the affair' but when she confronts Milo, she lashes out, telling him she wishes he had done suicide right.

Kristen Wiig (right) dresses up Bill Hader for Halloween
 in "The Skeleton Twins" (Roadside Attractions)

The weight is too much to bear: Maggie attempts to kill herself by tying weights to her legs to prevent her from rising up from the water. While the ending might play out like a lazy deus-ex-machina to some viewers, it actually echoes a key theme in the movie.  The visual motifs play out well here - that of the fish in water, the skeleton-key chains. Its about transparency taken to its logical limits. After the layers have been peeled, Milo and Maggie can finally see each other. No more dead fish in a plastic bag. Milo can now see that her sister is drowning. They can recognize that they are both drowning.

Which leads us to the best closing image: them humorously pulling their weight on each other as they stare at a gold-fish tank. Boy, they earn that moment. It's a beautiful and powerful last shot. With tremendous restraint in its balance of comedy and tragedy, Skeleton Twins really gets at what family can mean after all the pretensions have slipped away, when we're no longer afraid to show our true colors and have someone love us despite it all. But most importantly, it entertains and engages in a way that few movies rarely do. If you haven't seen this movie, go now.

Grade: A

The Skeleton Twins is now out in theaters.

David sums up his more-mixed thoughts in a lot less time, with his brief here.