General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

A Family Affair

A Family Affair is a 2024 American romantic comedy directed by Richard LaGravenese and released on Netflix on June 28, 2024, in which a young woman's life is upended when the movie star she works for begins a romance with her widowed mother.¹ It stars Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, and Joey King, with Kathy Bates and Liza Koshy in supporting roles.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	Netflix, June 28, 2024 (United States)¹
Director and writer	Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You, Beautiful Creatures), from a screenplay by Carrie Solomon¹
Main cast	Nicole Kidman as Brooke Harwood, Zac Efron as Chris Cole, Joey King as Zara Ford, Kathy Bates as Leila Ford, Liza Koshy as Eugenie²
Rating and runtime	PG-13; about 1 hour 51 minutes to 1 hour 54 minutes depending on the listing³^•²
Critical scores	36% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (101 reviews) and 31% on the audience Popcornmeter; a Metacritic Metascore of 43 from 23 reviews³^•⁴
IMDb rating	5.4 from about 41,000 user votes²
Streaming	Available on Netflix and Netflix Standard with Ads; not on Disney+, Prime Video, or Apple TV+²^•⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Zara Ford (Joey King) works as the personal assistant to Chris Cole (Zac Efron), a self-absorbed Hollywood star whose latest franchise film, Icarus Rush 4, is described within the movie as "'Die Hard' meets 'Miracle on 34th Street'".⁶ When Zara quits, a chance encounter brings Chris together with her mother, Brooke Harwood (Nicole Kidman), a widowed, award-winning writer, and the two quickly begin a romance.¹^•⁷ Netflix describes the result as a multigenerational, coming-of-age romantic comedy in which the three characters face the complications of love, sex, and identity.¹

Production

The screenplay was written by Carrie Solomon, who was 24 when she wrote it; director Richard LaGravenese said he saw it as an opportunity to make a romantic comedy that was also a coming-of-age story for three characters at three different stages of life.⁸ After the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes ended, the production returned for two weekends of reshoots at Trancas Country Market in Malibu, California, to capture a revised ending before the summer 2024 release.⁹

One scene in which Chris takes an ice bath was inspired by the real Efron's bulking-up regimen for the film The Iron Claw.¹⁰ A running gag in which Zara walks in on her mother and boss and collides with a doorframe took repeated takes; Joey King performed the hit seven times, with foam wood placed in the door and frame for safety.¹¹

Reception

The film received broadly negative reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 36% Tomatometer from 101 reviews and a 31% audience score, with a critics consensus stating that despite Efron and Kidman's return to rom-com territory, the film "squabbles with its own tonality too much to elevate its litany of clichés".³ Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 43 based on 23 reviews, in the "mixed or average" range.⁴ IMDb users rated it 5.4 out of 10 from about 41,000 votes.²

Reviewers disagreed about the leads. Time found the repartee between Efron and Kidman amusing and their chemistry surprisingly good, noting the two had previously played lovers in the 2012 film The Paperboy.¹² Other critics were less convinced: the AV Club gave a D−, and several reviews cited a lack of chemistry between the leads or a story that "makes no emotional sense".³ Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter, in a 70-point review, wrote that the film lurches between showbiz send-up and earnest romantic drama without settling on a single tone, while crediting both halves with enough charm to leave viewers smiling.⁴

Comparison with The Idea of You

A Family Affair was released weeks after Prime Video's The Idea of You, which also depicts an older single mother falling for a much younger, famous man, and reviewers treated the two as a matched pair.¹² Several critics judged A Family Affair the weaker of the two: The Independent called it "like a heavily medicated The Idea of You" with less romantic chemistry, and the ABC's review noted that The Idea of You grounded its premise in a sincere reflection on middle age, misogyny, and sex.¹³^•¹⁴ The Los Angeles Times interview with the cast framed the pairing differently, with Efron describing the earlier Paperboy relationship as an unrequited love whose building blocks carried into this film.⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026