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| Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader play siblings in the new comedy-drama The Skeleton Twins. |
There are bonds that can never be broken, and there are
bonds that must be broken. As The
Skeleton Twins progresses, it becomes clear which are which. It is
undeniable that twins Maggie and Milo share the former, but as the movie
begins, they have not spoken in 10 years. The intrigue comes less from the dawning
realization of what drove this wedge between them and more from the careful
mending of the wounds it left.
When we meet Milo, he is living in a cluttered apartment in
Los Angeles and seems to be reeling from a breakup with his most recent
boyfriend. He blasts his stereo, hops in the bathtub, and slashes his wrists.
Across the country in upstate New York, Maggie stares at herself in the mirror,
then looks down at a handful of pills. She, too, is going to end it, but moments
before she does, she gets a call that her brother is in the hospital. She picks
him up and invites him to stay with her and her new husband. He accepts the
invitation, and everything else flows from there.
Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader play the titular siblings. Every
scene between the two resonates with depth, warmth, and humor, and despite the
movie’s dark tone, the pairing of Wiig and Hader cannot help but bring light to
the proceedings. Though not portraying solely dramatic or tragic characters,
the actors are afforded the opportunity to show new sides to their well-known
comic personae.
In particular, Hader infuses Milo with the energy and wit so
often indicative of the characters he plays in his films or on Saturday Night Live, but The Skeleton Twins allows him to show
what happens to the smartass when the door closes and there is no else left in
the room. His go-to tactic of making jokes even in the darkest times reveals a
person who wants to make others happy despite his own happiness remaining
elusive.
As Milo is released from the hospital, he is reading “Marley
and Me.” Maggie arrives and accidentally spoils the ending. He plays the
victim, and she feels bad, before he reveals that he already knew how it ends,
that everyone knows how it ends. She says, “I see you’ve still got your sense
of humor.” He responds, “They can’t take that away from me.” This is another
joke, but it also is a moment of raw vulnerability. He is a struggling actor
who waits tables and keeps only the company of his fish. All he may have left
are his wisecracks.
Maggie is so mired in her rut that even her humor escapes
her. Her job is uninspiring, and though her marriage to Lance (Luke Wilson) tethers
her to reality, it also causes her no end of guilt. We never see what her days
were like before Milo showed up, but Wiig’s performance makes it clear Maggie
checked out of her life a long time ago.
The ways she tries to shake herself out of her depression
are observational of the limited options she sees for herself and the passive
role she plays in her day-to-day interactions. But the more she lies to
herself, the deeper into the muck she sinks. Milo comes back into her life at
her lowest moment, but it is just the nadir of a low ebb that has gone on since
before we can know. She did not get here overnight. She got here over years.
Wilson’s scene-stealing turn as the husband who may be the
nicest guy in the world is both hilarious and sad. A genuinely good, generally
happy person who plays fantasy football and enjoys The Deadliest Catch, Lance does not belong among these people. His
light-hearted optimism is the antithesis of what Milo and Maggie experience,
and his persistent upbeat attitude has the effect of rubbing the siblings’
noses in a state of being they could never enjoy.
Though there is some family backstory, including a father
who battled depression and lost, the script relies too much on “The Big Event”
in their lives that brought Milo and Maggie to this point. Writer-director Craig
Johnson and co-writer Mark Heyman seem to understand what it is like to suffer
from depression and the difficult process of recovery, but they seem at a loss
to explain its origins.
Depression is an impossibly multifaceted disease caused by
myriad genetic and environmental factors, and it would be a lot to ask for a
movie to explain. But by pinning so much of the siblings’ current state to one
major event from their teenage years, the movie undermines its potential for
exploration and growth, instead settling for deep characters defined by shallow
circumstance.
That Hader and Wiig are great in these roles in undeniable,
but one gets the feeling that given more incisive material, their performances
could have been transcendent. At the same time, the filmmakers clearly set out
to make an affecting comedy split evenly between pathos and humor. At that, they
have succeeded, and no one can take that away from them.
See it? Yes.
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