The Family Fang
Tags: flashback

Plot synopsis:
Annie and Buster Fang are the children of famous performance artists who, in the late 80s and early 90s, perform public interactive pieces with audiences who are unaware that they are performers and whose acts typically involve their children whom they film and credit as child A (Annie) and child B (Buster).
Annie grows up to be a highly successful actress who has been nominated for an Academy Award while Buster becomes a mediocre novelist who must supplement his work with freelance journalism. However, after being told by the director of her latest movie to appear nude in a scene, Annie begins to experience a nervous breakdown, appearing unstable to the media. Meanwhile, whilst on assignment in Nebraska covering a pair of war veterans who build spud guns, Buster is shot in the face and hospitalized. With limited funds and mounting medical debt he returns to his parents' home.
After being dumped by her publicist, Annie learns that her ex-boyfriend, who is a screenwriter, has been hired to write Annie out of the third installment of the franchise that made her a star. She consents to go with him on a trip to Wyoming. However, after he threatens to destroy her, she runs away from him at the airport and goes to see Buster. Immediately, Caleb and Camille attempt to force Annie and Buster to participate in one of their performance art pieces which involves handing out free coupons for chicken sandwiches and then watching as the crowd goes mad after the sandwiches are denied to them. Nonetheless, the stunt goes terribly wrong when Annie and Buster refuse to participate. Camille and Caleb are unable to hand out more than a few coupons and the people at the sandwich shop mistakenly believe that the coupons are valid and hand out sandwiches.
For a while Annie and Buster stay in their parents house feeling aimless. Annie discovers nearly a hundred paintings in her closet which her mother claims as her own, saying that she was a painter before she was a conceptual artist and had been slowly returning to that medium. She gives a painting each to Annie and Buster.
Buster receives a phone call from a local creative writing professor and, with Annie's support, speaks coherently to the creative writing class. After the class he is handed a stack of short stories by the professor and immediately connects to one written by a woman named Suzanne Crosby who he gives his number to in the hopes she will contact him with more of her work. Upon returning home he and Annie discover a note by their parents informing them they have gone to North Carolina. Freed from their parents, Annie and Buster go about dealing with their issues, including Buster's medical debt, which Annie decides to pay, and Annie's alcoholism, which Buster says she must wean herself off of. They later receive a call from a police officer claiming their parents are missing and possibly dead. Annie immediately believes this is part of a performance art piece while Buster suspects it is real. Annie resolves to go looking for her parents in order to prove they are still alive.
Annie and Buster go to visit Caleb's mentor Hobart Waxman. Hobart agrees with Annie that the Fangs are likely alive but tells them they have been given a gift and they should continue their lives without their parents. Annie refuses to accept this. Annie and Buster decide that the best way to lure their parents out of hiding is to put on an exhibition of Camille's portraits. However, the exhibition is a failure. Camille and Caleb do not appear and Annie and Buster decide to accept the fact that their parents are dead. They slowly begin to put their lives back together. Buster begins working on a novel and decides to move in with Suzanne while Annie accepts a role from the writer/director who directed her to an Academy Award nomination, Lucy Wayne. Before the siblings can fully move on with their lives, Suzanne gives Buster a heavy metal CD made by twin prodigies. Buster and Annie recognize the lyrics to their song Kill All Parents as a song their parents forced them to perform as children for a piece that was not recorded and therefore unavailable to the public. Pretending to be a music journalist, Buster contacts the twins for an interview and is able to get them to admit that the song was written by their father. The twins' mother then goes on the phone and asks them to leave their father alone.
Annie and Buster travel to North Dakota where they find their father living under the name Jim Baltz. He contacts their mother, who is living under the name Patricia Howlett and the four Fangs meet in the food court of an abandoned mall. Caleb admits that the two began to plan their disappearance approximately ten years earlier when Annie left home to become an actress. They plan to reveal themselves as living after they are legally declared dead in 7 years. Annie agrees not to blow their cover in exchange for never seeing them again. The parents readily agree and the Fangs part.
Ultimately Annie finds creative success on the set of Lucy's new movie and contemplates starting a romantic relationship with her. She realizes that Buster has surpassed her in managing to achieve peace and contentment and hopes to find the same.

Review: It is a portrait of psychological abuse conducted by parents in the name of art with sinister undercurrents always beneath the surface.Internationally renowned Caleb Fang (Christopher Walken) and his wife Camille (Maryanne Plunkett) are performance artists dedicated to disrupting the conventions of normality.
Their children Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Jason Bateman) have been used as performance props since they were born and their adult lives bear the scars of parenting based on artifice and deception.
When the siblings question the value of the performances the reaction is pure menace.This is a dysfunctional family in both obvious and implied ways, and the film keeps us guessing whether the knotted ball can ever be untangled.
The four characters are well defined with strong and believable performances, and the conflicts between young and old are frighteningly recognisable as the kind of things that happen in both normal and transgressive families.
Based on the 2011 best-selling American novel of the same name, The Family Fang tells the story of an unconventional family and the public pranks they pass off as performance art which is fun for them but shocking to the unsuspecting participants.
The talents of Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn and Christopher Walken are all wasted here on a wishy-washy script that probably sounded fine in a read-through, but just didn't translate well to the screen at all..
This is a very good work of fiction, well represented on the screen by Jason Bateman (who starred and directed it) and his stellar cast.
Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Kevin Wilson, 'The Family Fang' by Jason Bateman, is a wonder of a film.
This One's A Near-Perfect Comedy-Drama!'The Family Fang' Synopsis: A brother and sister return to their family home in search of their world famous parents who have disappeared.'The Family Fang' is a quietly devastating film, on how important it is to be a good parent, in order to raise their children sane.
In here, the unsettled protagonists (Bateman, Nicole Kidman, in Pure Oscar Peak Form), are a victim of unusual parents (Christopher Walken & Maryann Plunkett, both brilliant).
The idea isn't all that original, but the casting of Bateman, Kidman and Walken really make the movie better than it is.
They are artists, this is all a performance." Baxter (Bateman) and Annie (Kidman) Baxter are brother and sister who have tried their best to put their past behind them.
The idea isn't all that original, but the cast of Bateman, Kidman and Walken really make the movie better than it is and makes it worth watching for that reason if nothing else.
Another dysfunctional family movie that is really missing something to make you connect to the characters, but the actors did all they could.
'THE FAMILY FANG': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five)A dark comedy-drama flick, about the two adult children of a very controversial 'conceptual performance art' couple.
The siblings blame their mother and father for all of their current problems in life; and when their parents go missing, the sister is sure it's just another disturbing art project.
The film was directed by Jason Bateman, who also co-stars in it, and it was written by David Lindsay-Abaire.
The movie also co-stars Nicole Kidman (who co-produced the flick too), Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett, Kathryn Hahn (who also costarred in 'BAD WORDS'; which Bateman also directed and starred in) and Jason Butler Harner.
I enjoyed the film immensely.Baxter and Annie Fang (Bateman and Kidman) had a very bizarre, and highly unconventional, upbringing.
Their parents are world famous 'conceptual performance artists', named Caleb and Camille Fang (Walken and Plunkett), and they incorporated Baxter and Annie into most of their projects (when they were young).
When their mother and father go missing, and are presumed dead by authorities, Annie becomes obsessed with proving it's another art trick.I really like the story for this movie; it poses a lot of great questions about what makes great art.
I'm a big fan of performance art (I experience with it a lot on social media), so this film is very interesting to me.
I agree with Christopher Walken's character, on his opinions about art, but I think he took it too far, by involving his kids (I can see how that could do a lot of psychological damage to them).
This film deals not only with a dysfunctional family, a concept that has fascinated American cinema ever since American Beauty, but also with the relation between art and life.
Thematically, the family ensemble has been portrayed more incisively in the recent past (The Squid and the Whale, to name just one example with a similar character ratio), but the manner in which relationships are blurred and redefined here gives Fang a captivating spin.We are presented with two seemingly wayward, middle-aged siblings who, it turns out, grew up in a tradition of 'intempestive art'.
As an accident reunites the family, which had drifted apart in the mean time, tensions persist, culminating when the parents disappear and the obvious question is asked: is this just another hoax?
The story works primarily because Kidman (Annie) and Bateman (Baxter), child A and child B, as their parents called them, convey an understanding that does not require explanations.
Inevitability is usually a good thing to have in an ending, especially in one dealing with the nature of art.
Many of the dialogues in this movie I did watch over and over, the choice of words, the setting and acting were simply great.
It takes us into the mind of a celebrity and how they stage things and work their way to do anything to make art/acting look so real.
It was was beautifully done, but definitely not for the faint of heart.Directed by Jason Bateman and starring Jason Bateman, Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett.
Jason Bateman's directing and even acting gets better by each movie.
Sadness so absolute it is punishing.This is the best way I can describe what watching the inexorably depressing drama "The Family Fang" feels like virtually from start to finish.
Jason Bateman is quite good in his role as we have become accustomed to seeing from the gifted actor.
And I've seen her perform a lot.Regrettably, none of this outstanding work can rescue "The Family Fang" from the chokehold of despondency which this wretched story relentlessly strangles us with.
Ultimately what we are saddled with is a misery-drenched tale of two parents (Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett) who regard their young children as little more than compliant pawns in a twisted game of self-aggrandizement and perverse gratification.
I do not know the book on which it is based but all the story of this film seems to me an undeniable success, both in the type of characters, outsiders creators, and the plot -strange and twisted-, with a touch of humor, also with many moments of deep reflection on performance art, action-art, and the limit of consequences lead to (as did the performers of the 70s and no doubt inspired by them).
Very interesting, and ironic, the critical commentary to one of this movement's leaders, Chris Burden.The direction of the film (the first of Jason Bateman as director) is firm and convincing and the exquisite sobriety of interpretations, especially Kidman, Bateman and Walken, transform it into a film that it's almost certainly going to have a long run, especially in these times of artistic misery and cheap creative ideas..
Wow. This film tells the story of two siblings of behavioural artists Caleb and Camille, who have to play along to their parents cruel and traumatic pranks.
Jason Bateman directs this little jewel of a film based on the novel of the same name by Kevin Wilson and adapted for the screen by David Lindsay-Abaire.
Bateman also stars in the film as an integral part of a sterling cast of actors.
Bateman is a deft director and brings all the subtleties as well as the well-timed humor and dysfunctional family strains together for an educational as well as an entertaining movie.Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Jason Bateman) Fang, the adult children of the controversial husband and wife conceptual performance art couple famous for their quirky macabre public performances (Maryann Plunkett and Christopher Walken), have never got over the fact that their parents kept using them during their childhood in their often gory and disturbing satirical public performances (Annie and Baxter as children are played by Mackenzie Brooke Smith and Jack McCarthy and as teenagers by Taylor Rose and Kyle Donnery).
Christopher Walken is so engrossed in his role you almost believe he isn't acting at all.Really good film that everyone should give a fair go..
Christopher Walken did a grate job playing the farther figure and Jason Bateman did a grate job throw most of the movie..
Baxter (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Nicole Kidman) Fang are siblings of a very special family who made fame for themselves in the kids' youth as for their public performances of vanguard art which consisted in a rupture of social and everyday standards.
The whole family comes back together and Annie and Baxter and to confront their parents and their unusual past to figure out their now unbalanced life.I am a deep lover of cinema, every time I go to the theater I genuinely go there, no matter what the movie, to appreciate cinema and even when watching bad films I always try to get something out of it.
"The Family Fang" is simply a deeply disorienting film from tone to script to editing to, even if I don't like to talk about elements that are not part of the film, its poster.What basically makes this film unsettlingly weird from the start and on which the rest it builds on is the basic premise.
The film repeatedly reflects this sentiment the audience will probably feel with extras in it, but this doesn't suddenly make it tangible and understandable, least of all it does give it the sense it desperately needs.You are led to believe that offending two kids in public, making them kiss through a play despite the fact that they are siblings or assaulting a chicken sandwich stand should be these great polarizing pieces of vanguard-modern art.
The film asks you to believe that there is a conflict there, that this has an effect on the world and on our characters, but since the dynamic is never nor convincing nor interesting it simply has no effect whatsoever on the film.So then you are guided through a journey into a dysfunctional family where you feel absolutely lost and the film's style certainly doesn't help.
The plot turns are the only thing that apparently come close to feeling exciting, then what is truly under them is unveiled and I frowned deeper into my seat for that."The Family Fang" is a film that really got on the wrong side of me.
He doesn't always nail it, and requires the right script and fellow actors to make it work, but when it does come of it's a special thing to watch and makes for a great movie.
The sad thing is though, that if the films he appears in are as poor as this, he's never going to make it in the serious genres.I don't really know how to describe what's wrong with 'The Family Fang'.
Bateman, Nicole Kidman and Christopher Walken are all great actors, yet none of them exactly shine here.
Walken comes the closest, but if you're familiar with his work then you'd know he's capable of much better than what he puts forward here.The only element of the film I mildly enjoyed was the mystery side of things.
I'm told the novel which this is based on is actually quite funny, which surprised me because I didn't even come close to laughing once in this film, nor did it feel like they were ever trying to make me laugh.
I watched it over a period of three nights and thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.Nicole Kidman does a convincing job of playing a struggling movie star who isn't recognized easily by the public.
Maryann Plunkett plays the mother's role very well as she is torn between her life as it is and as it could have been.Lots of other actors also play these characters in flashbacks which tie the story together.
the basic virtue - it is an ambitious, interesting and original film by Jason Bateman.and, for him, it is a real good point.
not the last, the good performances( especially the reasonable younger Caleb of Jason Butler Harner).the sin - fragile balance for define the art as pretext for control of life of family.the roles are straitjackets.
the thin line between comedy and drama.the sketches of immaturity, credible but not convincing.short, a good film.
Disappearing Act. The Fangs are a family of artists and their lives are filled with drama, mysteries, and a web of lies.
Daughter, Annie (Nicole Kidman), son, Baxter (Jason Bateman), and their parents, performing artists Caleb (Christopher Walken) and Camille (Kathryn Hahn) all return to the family home after Baxter has an accident that lands him in the hospital.
Annie Fang (Nicole Kidman) is struggling in her acting career and pushed into a topless scene.
As young kids, their artistic parents (Jason Butler Harner, Kathryn Hahn) would perform surprise pranks on the public with them.
Suddenly, their parents go missing and the siblings go in search for them.The present-day scenes have some big names but I kept wondering if the movie would function better as a coming-of-age story with the kids and two outrageous parents.
Sadly, The Family Fang, Bateman (doubling as director)'s adaptation of Kevin Wilson's ode to the emotional alienation of a dysfunctional family unable to extricate life from pretentious, avant garde performance art, has nothing so unconventional on its mind.
This isn't to say The Family Fang is an overall poor film – it's capably written and shot, well-paced, including a couple of well-orchestrated twists along the way as the film flirts with the murder mystery genre in its second act, and a good bit with a crossbow.
And it's pretty clear that when Walken's Caleb Fang relentlessly pontificates on 'great art should make you feel things,' glum and restless was not what he had in mind.As the two children desperately trying to siphon through their baggage to carve out their own artistic careers (and functional lives) amidst their parents' warped shadows, Nicole Kidman and Bateman himself do give strong performances, Kidman's peppery indignation making a good foil against Bateman's timidly sarcastic resignation.
Similarly, no one could be perfectly cast as the kooky but emotionally abusive Caleb Fang than Christopher Walken, but he's used so sparingly, and plays so caustically bitter the whole time, that his weirdness is too acidic to enjoy.
It was adapted from the book of the same name that tells the story of a brother and sister who begin to investigate their mysteriously disappeared parents.
With some flashbacks, which reveals how these two grew up with their famous prank artist parents.When I saw the opening scene, I was really excited and thought the film would be like this throughout.
Like maybe some smart twist or the edgy scenes before concluding would have done good.Jason Bateman and Nicole Kidman with their multiple roles like actors, producers et cetera should have been the hefty load, but I think they managed well.
The southern culture and the unspoken but very present Bible Belt offer an important counterpoint to the parents' commitment to art and ability to tune out or reject anything that is not in their definition of art.Bateman and Kidman were much older than the characters and while Christopher Walken was the perfect choice, the weird comedic genius he brought was not utilized in the film at all.
And I wouldn't say it's put together successfully: too much empty talk and too little character development or concentrating on family dynamics.But it does raise interesting questions about how or why parents are to blame for shortfalls in their offsprings' later independent life.
At least it did for me.The story is about adult brother and sister (Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman) not enjoying their adult existence and blaming parents for not raising them the proper way.
But the latter (Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett) are lifelong controversial performance artists who claim that true art is more important than being like everybody else.I haven't read the successful 2011's novel by Kevin Wilson the movie is based on but Bateman, also directing, seemed to be struggling with the adaptation.
bateman and kidman are the adult children of performance artists.
bateman directed, great job; kidman was really good.
The Family Fang consists of two siblings who believe their dysfunctional upbringing has created most of the problems that they are currently experiencing and two parents who believe the extreme but functional artistic upbringing of their children has created two wonderful adults.
An accident brings the family together at the time of great upheaval, artistic block and unhappiness in the (now adult) sibling's lives.
It begs the question "what is art" but, more importantly, why are people so stupid that they don't get it?Nicole Kidman could be playing an exact parody of her own life.
Jason Bateman's stars and his second toe in the director's pond is a surprising and cruelly compassionate comment on art vs family.
this is the worst of all child abuse ever.I hated the movie,I hated the idea and I think that nobody should spent a minute of their life watching this piece of number two,not art at all..
Contrary to what you might think, it manages to correct the lives of the two main characters who finally can succeed in both their careers and life.It simply lacks complexity and the actors don't manage to do anything in making better.