R | 1h 37m | Rom-com | 2025
Alex Winter is best known for playing Bill in the “Bill and Ted” movies along with Keanu Reeves. As a filmmaker, his best-known works are documentaries, including “Zappa,” “Downloaded,” and “Deep Web.”
With “Adulthood,” Winter indulges his love for dark comedies by examining the troubles of two siblings who have discovered it’s highly likely their parents were responsible for murdering someone 30 years ago.
The premise has lots of potential, and there’s fun to be had watching the main characters dig themselves deeper into trouble, trying to find work-arounds to doing the right thing. Their first choice is to not immediately turn the whole thing over to the police.
Dirty Deeds
Judy (Ingunn Omholt), mother of Noah (Josh Gad) and Meg (Kaya Scodelario), recently suffered a stroke. Brother and sister reunite to deal with the situation. Noah is a Los Angeles-based, struggling-screenwriter. His sister Meg is a married mom whose eldest kid has special diabetes-monitoring needs.They aren’t particularly close, but they find reason to join forces when, while trying to clean the mildewing basement, discover a literal skeleton in the closet. It turns out that it’s the remains of their old neighbor Patti, who disappeared 30 years ago.
It’s immediately apparent to the siblings that their parents were up to no good, so Noah and Meg decide to dump the body in the local quarry, rather than complicate things. If they report it, see, Patti’s kids will sue them, and there goes the inheritance money Noah was hoping to get his hands on.
Lack of Commitment
The mild, early fun in “Adulthood” is watching Noah and Meg process how they have unknowingly lived with a walled-in corpse in the basement for decades. Of course, their decision to eliminate evidence sets the stage, promising a plethora of dark farce to come. However, “Adulthood,” feels muted. Things should go complete Loony Tunes, but don’t—director Winter chooses to focus more on the psychology and the reality of the cartoonish set-up.
Bits of humorous exaggeration are attempted, such as Noah bringing in weird cousin Bodie (Anthony Carrigan) to intimidate Grace, and Grace bringing in her hairdresser, the large T’Shawn (Sean Simms), as a hired goon, because he looks like one.
As Noah and Meg attempt to deny access to their mistakes, things get increasingly violent, which allows the premise to reach its potential. However, “Adulthood” can’t decide what it wants to be. It should have gone with full crazy or full misery—either commitment would have been more satisfying.
