This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
The Adults follows a man returning home after moving away to connect with his sisters and prove himself as the best poker player in his friend group. Starring Michael Cera, Sophia Lillis, and Hannah Gross, The Adults really invoked feelings of trying to reconnect with a disconnected family.
Michael Cera perfectly captures the awkwardness of someone who’s coming back home and feels like he doesn’t quite belong there. You can physically feel how uncomfortable he is with the idea of spending more time than he has at home up until he convinces himself to stay to play poker. Lillis and Gross complement this in completely different ways and it works so well.
Lillis is the young naive sister who is happy to see her brother back. She has him do old family songs and dances with her and makes you feel how much she misses his presence. Gross on the other hand is the older sister who is more confrontational. She’s upset that he never stayed for more than a day ever since their mom died. She’s the one who’s had to keep things together and pushes back on his erratic behavior. They all know how to push each other’s buttons and it made me forget that they are just actors playing roles.
There are some real cringey moments in The Adults, but it helped to make the film feel real. It felt like someone who has been living in their own world getting pressed by someone he is responsible for that he did not fulfill his duties to his family. I think the poker subplot really drove that home. Cera was ready to leave after a night until he lost a poker game and felt he had to prove himself. He only visited with his family for a day, and he was going to be fine with that. The way it ends also points out just how pointless it was in the grand scheme that he was just there for poker.
The confrontations are pretty much handled in goofy ways, using accents to soften the edge of what each person is saying. It’s a goofy way of handling it but I liked that this fictional family probably wouldn’t be the best at facing their conflicts head-on.
Final Thoughts
Movies like this are quaint in their looks but emphasize human emotions and behaviors. The Adults did a good job making me feel what each member of the family felt and made me think about if that’s something my family thinks about. Michael Cera, Hannah Gross, and Sophia Lillis are all very good at playing their characters and making the family feel real. It’s been under the radar, but The Adults is good.
