The Skeleton Twins

Just as Maggie is about to fill her mouth with enough pills to ensure she shakes off her mortal coil. she gets a telephone call from a Nurse in a Hospital E.R. room telling her that Milo her twin brother has just attempted suicide. The news means that she puts her own plans on hold and flies out to L.A. to visit her sibling that she hasn’t spoken too for the past 10 years.

Milo is just out of another failed relationship and cannot get an Agent, let alone an acting job, so is suffering from depression. Maggie on the other hand is a dental hygienist who is unhappily married to the sweet gregarious Lance who doesn’t suspect for one moment that his wife is as miserable as sin. When the twins meet in the hospital neither discuss their own predicaments and they cover their awkwardness at being together with funny banter like they shared in their childhood.

Despite their estrangement Maggie persuades Milo to come back home with her to upstate New York to recuperate but it turns out that she also wants him to be a buffer with Lance and her marriage. There is a clue as to how the twins reached this level of dissatisfaction with life when they have a surprise visit from their annoying new-age mother who had abandoned them long ago after their father had taken his own life.

As part of trying to re-adjust to living in his old hometown Milo plays a visit to his old English teacher with whom he had an inappropriate relationship with he was the man’s pupil. Rich now has a live-in girlfriend and a teenage son but it doesn’t stop him sleeping with Milo again which messes with both of their heads. Maggie meanwhile has taken to trying all sorts of classes to learn new skills … the current one is scuba diving …. and she inevitably sleeps with each instructor before moving on again. Lance is blissfully unaware of anything going on under his roof and thinks that he and Maggie are trying to have a baby, where instead of being upfront with how she feels, is secretly taking birth control pills. When he discovers the truth and Maggie discovers that Milo has been seeing Rick again, all hell finally lets loose. The one thing the siblings now realize is that they are capable of hurting each other like no-one else can.

This terrific acutely written piece about two tortured souls trying to valiantly cope with the lives that they have ended up with is a sheer joy mainly because of the effusive humor that prevails throughout the whole piece. Directed and part-written by Craig Johnson who cut his teeth on the mumble-core hit ‘True Adolescents’ that starred Mark Duplass who turns up here with his brother Jay as Producers. What elevates the movie from a run-of-the-mill melodrama are the shockingly good performances from two ex SNL alumni Kirsten Wiig and Bill Hader whose familiarity with each other helped them create the most perfect chemistry as the siblings. We know from her previous roles such as in the blockbuster ‘Bridesmaids‘ that Ms Wiig is a very talented actress but Hader’s performance as a confused gay man was so pitch perfect and such a delight. You would have to be made of stone not to be in aisles laughing at the hilarious sight of the pair of them outrageously lip-syncing to the 80’s disco hit ‘Nothing’s Going To Stop Me Now’ .

They are supported by Owen Wilson playing it straight as the cuckolded Lance, Joanna Gleason in an all-too-small cameo role as the ridiculously annoying mother, and Ty Burrell getting as far way from possible from his usual role on Modern Families to give a beautifully understated performance as the ex-school teacher Rich.

For a story that starts with two failed suicide attempts, this turns out to be an incredible funny and touching movie that I highly recommend.
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