‘A Kid Like Jake’ Review

Parenting in the age of gender nonconformity

Claire Danes and Jim Parsons star in director Silas Howard's A Kid Like Jake, a play-turned-film that's a bit of a nouveau New York City parable about gender norms and the burgeoning middle-ish class of late millennial professionals/parents who affect their kids' evolution through absurd levels of attention and involvement.

From their impossibly nice apartment, Alex (Danes) and Greg (Parsons) Wheeler raise their son Jake, a boy more interested in eschewing his societally dictated boy-ness and dressing as Rapunzel for Halloween than he is in wearing pants or playing ball. He's only 4, Greg and Alex hypothesize, so he's bound to grow out of it. But when a caring preschool teacher (Octavia Spencer) points out that Jake's nonconformity may be more than a simple phase, his parents must address their plans and goals while grappling with their own traumas and relationship issues.

Danes is sometimes stirring as an ex-lawyer who may not have wanted children and who waffles between defending her son's self-expression while worrying for his future in the cruel, real world. Parsons, here a psychologist of some kind, mostly keeps quiet—for fear of his former shark of a wife or because he's just a thoughtful fellow we never really learn about, save for one explosive and fantastic scene between them in the wake of a shared tragedy.

Jake (Leo James Davis), meanwhile, is rarely seen and relegated to a few "ain't he cute?" scenes peppered throughout the film. We get it—the story is really about the parents and, by extension, the world at large, but his lack of screen time mostly causes a feeling of disconnect; neither Alex nor Greg are strong enough characters to make us care for them, and Jake, being the centerpiece of the drama, is a kid we really don't know no matter how many times we're reminded he's supposed to be special.

Elsewhere, we get snippet-length views of the Wheelers' trying family and friends and a rather funny lambasting of big-city private school elitism, but we never get a sense of what anyone actually wants. It's promising that we consistently feel disappointment toward those who would make Jake feel as if his self-expression and non-conformity are somehow wrong, but we still don't believe that anyone learned anything, even if we do find the kid wearing a dress or skirt a couple times throughout.

6
+Important message; Octavia Spencer=national treasure

-We never come to care for the central characters

A Kid Like Jake
Directed by Howard
With Danes, Parsons, Spencer and Davis
Jean Cocteau Cinema, NR, 92 min.

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