Some of the movie podcasters I enjoy listening to have these movie subcategories like garbage Tarantino or garbage fish to describe a type of movie that was inspired by the greats, but finds itself settling level(s) below the classics. A Normal Family to me is garbage Burning, as director Heo Jin-ho probably saw that incredible Korean film, and thought to himself, “I think I can make something like that”. Turns out Jin-ho might want to study Lee Chang-dong’s movie a little closer and try again, maybe even with this same story.
Cause I excitedly went to this movie for its setup. Brothers Yang Jae-wan (Sul Kyung-gu) and Yang Jae-gyu (Jang Dong-gun) have that classic stressful brotherly connection. Both have respected middle class livings. Recently unwidowed Jae-wan is a high powered lawyer/defender of the rich & powerful, remarried to the young hot Ji-su (Claudia Kim) with a young baby and an annoyed sneaky teenage daughter Hye-yoon (Hong Ye-ji) who has been parenting herself since her mom died. His equal and opposite Jae-gyu is a well respected doctor, long married to Lee Yeon-kyung (Kim Hee-ae) with his teenage son Hyung-cheol (Yoo Su-bin), quiet and clearly not very popular at school. At the center of the tense Yang relationship is the brothers’ infirmed mother (Byun Joong-hee), nearing that point where she should maybe go to a retirement home; hopefully a family dinner can resolve the current untenable situation where Jae-gyu carries the burden of caring for her.
That intentionally messy set up should draw any excited moviegoer in. Even if that was it, we’d have a messy family drama with smartly laid out families to play off one another, especially the quietly hostile Cold War between Ji-su and Lee Yeon-kyung. But on top of that, the script takes that general setup and shows how interwoven all the Yang’s are in each other’s lives. The opening scene isn’t the family, it’s about a car crash on the news, where a very entitled rich brat kills a man with his car, and his widow (Choi Ri) ends up in a hospital watching over her daughter, in a coma. Can you maybe guess which hospital she’s at…and which law firm the the rich brat’s parents go to for defense? And all this tension from the parents transfers to the kids, who lash out in different ways, causing other wrinkles in the story. The last time I saw a setup similar to this was Burning, and before that A Separation, two of the best movies of the last decade, giving me great hope for where A Normal Family was going to go.
Problem is, great set ups become great movies with great execution. A Normal Family slowly becomes the movie equivalent of slowly letting the air out of the balloon because the team behind the scenes couldn’t deliver on the setup’s tantalizing promises. The dialogue is soap opera level on the nose, written to move the plot, dehumanizing what should be a very human story. Amplifying that mistake are the actors, who have all sorts of opinions on what their characters should be like. As a result, there’s lots of over the top acting next to quietly subtle characters, which clang wildly, sucking the tension out of each scene unless we get a pairing that makes sense. A Normal Family should be messy, and not really answer any questions, but instead, the script’s third act starts taking the murky gray the movie was really trying to morally live in and turns it black and white, so it’s crystal clear where the story is going, save for a jarring tinge of horror that felt more like a puzzle piece than an emotional gut punch. When I should have been crying or gutted, I was rolling my eyes, because all the good grace had been taken away by A Normal Family’s end.
While I’m disappointed in A Normal Family, I’m not miserable over it. Not every South Korean film can be a Bong, Park or Lee masterpiece. We have to have a few mid tier efforts to understand why the big 3 keep getting the accolades they do. I would like this premise sold to all the film studios, as a challenge to see who can make the best version of this movie. Wait, nevermind. A Separation exists: I’ll just watch that again…and destroy my heart in the most brilliant movie way possible.