Why Every Lesbian Needs to Watch The Kids Are All Right (2010)

You know that feeling when a movie just GETS your life as a queer woman? That’s exactly what happened when I first watched The Kids Are All Right back in 2010. Yeah, I’m dating myself, but this film directed by Lisa Cholodenko and starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a long-term lesbian couple still hits different even in 2025.

Let me set the scene for the newbies: Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a married lesbian couple in California who’ve been together forever. Each gave birth to one kid using the same anonymous sperm donor – Joni (Mia Wasikowska) is about to head to college and Laser (Josh Hutcherson) is the typical moody teenage boy. Curiosity gets the better of them, they track down their biological dad Paul (Mark Ruffalo doing peak charming dirtbag energy), and suddenly this perfectly imperfect lesbian family is thrown into total chaos.

Here’s the thing that made this movie groundbreaking back then: it wasn’t about coming out. It wasn’t about homophobia from the outside world (though there are subtle moments). It was just… a family. A lesbian family dealing with the same messy crap every other family deals with – cheating, resentment, teenagers being teenagers, mid-life crises, and the eternal question of “who left the damn chicken out to rot?!” (Iconic line, by the way.)

Annette Bening’s Nic is the uptight breadwinner doctor who loves her wine a little too much and secretly feels threatened when free-spirited Jules starts getting attention. Julianne Moore’s Jules is the softer, slightly lost one trying to start a landscaping business while figuring out who she is after years of being “Mom.” Their chemistry is so real it hurts – the way they bicker over dinner, the comfortable intimacy of two women who’ve built a whole life together… God, it was the representation we were starving for in 2010.

And yeah, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Jules sleeps with Paul. The internet lost its mind when this came out. “How dare they make the lesbian cheat with a MAN!” Calm down, Susan. The whole point is that being lesbian doesn’t make you immune to making terrible decisions when you’re feeling unseen in your relationship. It’s not “lesbian erasure” – it’s just human. Been there, girl.

What I love most is how unapologetically lesbian the whole movie feels even when it’s not trying. The way Nic and Jules watch gay male porn together (yes, really) and it’s treated like the most normal thing in the world. The casual domesticity of their life – dropping kids at school, hosting dinner parties, arguing about gardening. This wasn’t a “very special episode” about gay people. This was just… life. Lesbian life.

Fourteen years later, do I still love it as much? Honestly? Even more. Because we’ve had more queer content since then (thank God), but very few films capture long-term lesbian relationships with this much honesty. Most sapphic stories are still about the falling-in-love phase. This one dares to ask: okay, but what happens after twenty years? When the passion settles into routine and someone starts feeling invisible?

The kids really ARE all right, by the way. Joni and Laser feel like actual teenagers – awkward, selfish, loving, confused. The scene where Joni leaves for college and the moms are sobbing in the car? I still can’t watch it without crying. Every queer person who’s been sent off to college by their chosen (or biological) family knows that exact feeling.

Look, it’s not a perfect movie. Some people hate Paul (I kind of love to hate him). The ending feels a tiny bit tidy. But for a mainstream film in 2010 to center a lesbian couple, give them real flaws, real sex scenes, real problems, and still say “yeah, they belong together”? Revolutionary.

If you’re a baby gay who somehow hasn’t seen this yet, fix that immediately. If you’re an elder lesbian like me who saw it in theaters and cried because finally someone made a movie about US… watch it again. It holds up. The Kids Are All Right isn’t just a great lesbian movie. It’s a great movie, period – that just happens to star two moms who love women.

And honestly? We need about ten more just like it.

(Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to rewatch the dinner table meltdown scene for the 600th time. “I’m just saying… the chicken was RAW!”)