The Skeleton Twins

Film Review by Jamie Dunn | 03 Nov 2014
Film title: The Skeleton Twins
Director: Craig Roberts
Starring: Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson, Ty Burrell, Boyd Holbrook, Joanna Gleason
Release date: 7 Nov
Certificate: 15

“Maybe we were doomed from the beginning.” So says bored dental hygienist Maggie (Wiig) in voiceover at the opening of The Skeleton Twins, before her gay, wannabe actor brother, Milo (Hader), from whom she’s been estranged for a decade, slits his wrists in the bathtub on screen. Don’t worry, he doesn’t cut too deep – this is a comedy after all – but the siblings’ salty exchanges do.

Maggie drags her brother back East to live with her and her square husband Lance (Wilson). “I’m a tragic gay cliché,” Milo quips, mortified with his new situation. He would have been, in other hands, but the script is so smart and Hader’s performance so honest that his myriad issues are worn lightly and take a backseat to his delightfully cynical character. Wiig is no acting slouch either: for evidence, check the scene where she seamlessly transitions from fart gags to a confession about her habitual infidelities.

This brother-sister bond, so rarely explored on screen, is what makes The Skeleton Twins sing. We all knew the SNL pair had a finely calibrated comic chemistry – it clearly extends to an emotional one too. [Jamie Dunn]