Movie Review: The Skeleton Twins

I love when films totally surprise me.  The Skeleton Twins featured two actors who are best known for comedic roles, and the film was marketed as a comedy, but, while it did have some elements that tried to be funny, the movie as a whole left me feeling rather depressed, which I had not been expecting.  I think the creators' decision to take a comedic approach to the story was very clever because it allowed the actors to be real without disturbing the flow of the piece.  When audiences come to see a drama, sometimes it is difficult to know how to react to funny scenes because they often seem distasteful and/or out of place, but when you come to see a comedy and you're hit with tragedy and realism, it has a very different (although equally shocking) effect.  In The Skeleton Twins, the comedy exists in the relationship between the two main characters, Maggie and Milo, and it is ironic that both characters are actually tragic.  As I watched the movie, I thought of Oral Fixations artist Julia Randall and her concept of "Ha ha!...Huh...".  I felt bad for wanting to laugh at the film's sitcom-like moments because the characters' situations were truly emotional.

There is quite a bit of irony in The Skeleton Twins in the sense that nothing really turns out the way you expect it to.  Its dramatic turns, strange character developments, and lack of a happy ending are all surprising to the viewer.  This went along with the storyline very well; in the same way that some audience members may have been disappointed by the turnout of the story, the main characters were disappointed with the turnout of their lives.  The Skeleton Twins has relatable and well-developed characters, brilliant imagery, and some really beautiful moments.  I especially liked the emphasis on the twins' emotional connection to water as a result of the manner in which their father took his own life.  Most of the flashbacks to the twins' childhood were clips of the two of them swimming together and playing games underwater.  The clear connection between the flashbacks in the water and the penultimate scene in the pool created even more tension and beauty at the climax of the story.  Perhaps my favorite scene in the movie took place right after the twins' most intense fight, when Kristen Wiig's character, Maggie, comes inside to find the two goldfish she had purchased earlier, forgotten, lying dead on the table.  For most people, after a huge emotional argument with a loved one, a pair of dead goldfish would seem trivial, but Maggie looked at the fish and saw herself...limp, helpless, lifeless.  I'll not soon forget the macabre image of her violently stirring the fish up in a bowl of water in a futile attempt to rejuvenate them, as if the fish had been her last hope in life and she had failed them, too, just like with everyone else.

I thought that this story had potential to send a powerful message, but after watching the film I found that it doesn't really have much of a message at all.  Too many parts of the story are left unresolved and/or simply forgotten.  Over the course of the movie, Maggie and Milo change and grow as siblings; they learn how important they are to one another, and they learn to appreciate the relationship they have, but beyond that, they do not solve any problems or change as people.  Both Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig gave strong, if slightly inconsistent, performances.  The issues with the plot seem to lie with the script and not with the actors.  In my opinion, the writers could have taken more risks, but instead they took the easy way out by leaving many things unfinished in favor of an ambiguous ending.  It was as if they had just shrugged and said, "Yup.  That's all we got, folks."  Especially after such a wonderfully emotional climax, I was disappointed with the ending.  A more dramatic finish...a divorce, a death, a lawsuit...would have sent a more meaningful message, and might have actually been more realistic, given the characters' circumstances.  And yes, as audience members we're supposed to imagine that some of these things do eventually happen to the characters, that their lives go on after the credits start to roll, but ambiguous endings are starting to become cliched.  In the end of The Skeleton Twins, Maggie and Milo simply accept the problems in their lives, and it is not implied that they will ever try to fix them.  I was actually surprised when the closing credits started.  I'd love to see a film writer stand up straight and say, "Yup.  THIS is how the story ends.  In your face!"

Also, about Bill Hader's character, Milo...he complemented Kristen Wiig's Maggie very nicely, and the two had great chemistry, but the way Milo himself was written was insulting.  Why is the gay character always so pathetic, always a victim of something, and never the strong one?  Did the film world really need yet another stereotypical, childish, flamboyant gay character?  I think not.  But if you really must create a character who possesses those qualities, why would you intentionally make him the comic relief?  The scenes where Milo had to perform tasks that are considered to be masculine, such as rock climbing or clearing brush in the woods, were only included to get a laugh.  This needs to stop.  The performing arts industry, while it is possibly the most openly LGBTQ-friendly community in the country, is in constant danger of making things worse for homosexuals by constantly portraying them either as emotionally confused weaklings or as well-dressed Barbie dolls who exist solely for the amusement of others.  Bill Hader's Milo was not the worst example of this injustice that I have seen; in fact, Milo turns out to be quite heroic in the end.  But it bothered me that the film's only gay character was still set up to be laughed at by audiences just for being a little bit feminine and eccentric.

The best thing about this film was that it shed light on what life is like for people who struggle with depression, mental instability, and family issues.  The characters' conflicts were complex and extreme, but completely understandable given the nature of everything they had gone through.  It was educational to watch these two mentally ill people helping each other to be strong; seeing their vulnerabilities made it easy to sympathize, even though I had never experienced anything like the events in the movie.  Overall, The Skeleton Twins is unique, emotional, visually appealing, and certainly worth the price of a movie ticket.  It has its problems, but nothing catastrophic.  Although I disagree with certain aspects of the plot and character developments, this movie definitely kept me entertained and made me think about life.