The Skeleton Twins (2014)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

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Sub 1: Do you love him?
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Sub 1: Maybe good isn’t your thing.

Rating: R
Director: Craig Johnson
Writers: Craig Johnson, Mark Heyman
Stars: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Luke Wilson, Ty Burrell
Release Date: (United States)
Run time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki

Maggie is in her bathroom preparing to swallow a handful of pills, but she is interrupted by a phone call from a hospital, informing her that her twin brother Milo—whom she hasn’t seen in 10 years—has attempted suicide. Maggie visits Milo in the hospital in Los Angeles and suggests that he come to stay with her in their childhood hometown of Nyack, New York. He agrees and meets Maggie’s husband Lance.

Milo is surprised when Lance tells him that he and Maggie are trying to have a baby, as Maggie never expressed a desire for children. Maggie later confesses to Milo that she’s been taking contraceptive pills, both to avoid having a child with Lance and because she had been having sex with her scuba instructor Billy. She worries that she is not worthy of Lance, but Milo reassures her.

Milo reconnects with his high school English teacher Rich, with whom he had a sexual relationship when he was 15. Rich now has a sixteen-year-old son and is dating a woman. Milo and Rich spend the night together. Later, Milo appears at Rich’s house while his son is there. This infuriates Rich, who does not want his past exposed. Maggie is also upset with Milo for resuming contact with Rich, as she exposed the relationship to end it as well as Rich’s teaching career.

Milo tells Maggie about a boy that had once bullied him, a boy who their father had assured him would reach his peak in high school and have a miserable adult life. But it turns out that the bully has a successful happy life, and it is Milo who had peaked in high school. Maggie asks for reassurance that he will not kill himself, and he promises to try not to.

Lance confides to Milo that he is concerned that he may be infertile. Milo mentions that Maggie used to hide cigarettes around the house, leading Lance to find the contraceptives.

Maggie ends the relationship with Billy and returns home where she is confronted by Lance, who is painfully confused by the birth control pills he has found. She admits to her affairs, then confronts Milo, blaming him for ruining her marriage. Milo retorts that it was no “marriage”, and she lashes back suggesting that next time he tries suicide he should do it right. Maggie leaves Milo a voicemail echoing his suicide note and goes to the pool where she had been taking scuba lessons. Tying weights to her body, she jumps into the pool. As she begins to drown, she panics but is unable to free herself. Milo, having heard her message, jumps into the pool and rescues her.

The film closes with the twins at Maggie’s house, looking at their new fish tank filled with goldfish.

My Review

The Skeleton Twins is not something I would usually watch, but I am glad that I did. The short-blurb description of the movie just sounds too heavy-handed. “Estranged adult twins each narrowly avoid death by suicide, on the same day, and reconnect to discover that each is what the other needed.” That’s all true, but it doesn’t really due justice to what this movie achieves, which is a gritty, fair, and darkly funny examination two profoundly damaged people. We get to know them without celebrating or downplaying either of their flaws or disorders, or the hurt they cause to everyone around them. You watch this movie and feel thankful not to know either of them, or have their brokenness on your door. Yet despite it all we find beauty in them both, too. Milo and Maggie are both trying, failing, and trying some more, and they want to help each other, too. You end the movie with a sense of thankfulness that they were there for each other and with some hope for both in the future. Simultaneously, you also end the movie knowing the odds are stacked against both of them. For me, the most surprising – in a good way – aspect of the story was how much affection I had for both of these terrible troubled people as the credits were rolling. Overall, the movie is a remarkable achievement.

The film was incredibly well-written and acted. The pacing was crisp without ever lagging or growing boring. The screenplay balanced its really dark and heavy moments with a lot of genuinely funny and relatable dark humor. I don’t know that it would have worked without Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader giving absurdly good acting performances, but fortunately they both delivered award-worthy work. The story asked a lot from both of them, but I never felt like they were inauthentic or too over-the-top. I bought it. Hader and Wiig were both incredible.

It seems fair, given the film’s substance, to provide a list of things you should prepare for if you decide to watch. The movie delivers multiple suicide attempts. We find out that Milo was dressed up like a girl when they were very young. We find out that the twins’ father committed suicide when they were 14. Milo the gay brother was sexually molested at age 15, by a male adult teacher, and views the experience as primarily positive, though no one else does. He rekindles that relationship during the movie, in secret, and despite the teacher being married and closeted. Maggie is a serial adulterer, we see one of those flings on-screen, and she does this while she simultaneously lies to her husband about wanting children (while secretly taking birth control.) That’s probably not everything, but I think it covers most of the bases. It’s a lot to absorb in 90 minutes.

So how did I find this movie? I found it through 1980s pop music and social media (an IG reel, I’m sure.)

With all due respect to Kim Cattrall, Andrew McCarthy, and the Mannequin film franchise, this Starship classic has now found itself a better movie soundtrack home. Well, at least this is a better movie. It does occur to me that the use of this song, in isolation, might give the wrong impression about The Skeleton Twins. It’s not a hopeful and uplifting romance story between a man and a beautiful woman he fashioned from plastic… or between Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. It’s a brother-sister non-romance (the movie does not veer into Game of Thrones-ish incest territory) about a long list of the heaviest topics imaginable… except, as I say, the brother and sister are not a couple. That vibe is never hinted at, in case you’re worried. The scene is great, though.

Overall, assuming you know what you’re walking into and are prepared for it, I highly recommend this movie. It’s brilliantly written and acted. It balances its humor with its heavy subject matter in such a way that it was never a struggle to watch. I never felt like it was preaching to me. It doesn’t glorify severe dysfunction in the process of successfully humanizing two people going through it. I was impressed.

Have you seen The Skeleton Twins? If so, what did you think?