Sometimes the only thing that stops us from crying is laughing.
Perhaps this is the reason depressing subject matter such as suicide, infidelity, and sexual abuse makes Craig Johnson’s indie comedy, The Skeleton Twins, such a hoot. In the film, two former Saturday Night Live comics, Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, play twins whose lives and psyches were irreparably damaged when their father committed suicide during their childhood.
Hader’s character, Milo, is an unsuccessful gay actor who moves back in with his sister after an attempted suicide. While there, Milo tries to get back with an old boyfriend — we later discover this is the teacher with whom he engaged in a sexual relationship when he was 15. Milo sees nothing wrong with the relationship and pursues it as an adult.
His sister, Maggie (Kristen Wiig), who coincidently attempted to commit suicide at the same time, is dealing with equally troubling problems. She is married to a kind man, but one she doesn’t wholeheartedly love. She sleeps around with other men while secretly taking birth control pills to prevent the pregnancy that her husband so desperately wants.
None of this sounds very funny, yet Johnson has managed to make one of the more humorous movies of the year; the genius is that he masterfully melds sitcom-like gags and the character’s melancholic issues.
As we delve further into the material, we see how these characters use their outgoing personalities to mask and forget about their hang ups. As the darkness slowly begins to diminish the light in the story, the humour disappears and the characters’ inner conflicts take center stage.
What could have been a film where juvenile humour undermines the more serious patches of the story, actually ends up being a film with especially nuanced and flushed out characters. The tonal shifts could have been jarring and unnatural, but since they are grounded in the characters and exceptionally navigated by the two central performances, they feel authentic.
For example, there is a scene where Milo and Maggie have a solemn fight and, to lighten the mood and escape the real issues at hand, Milo walks over to the stereo and blasts Starship’s glossy pop song “Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now.” He busts out flamboyant dance moves and exaggerated lip syncing. Maggie is annoyed at first but can’t help being drawn in by her brother. She too starts to lip sync. It’s a touching yet hilarious sequence that also fits alongside the character’s personalities and coping mechanisms.
When the pop song is over and there are no more comedic sequences the film fearlessly enters into the characters’ hurts; however, it only retreads the same beats that it previously explored in the humorous moments. By the third act, the film stretches its running time to feature length with purposeless flashback montages.
Skeleton Twins is at its best when we laugh with a bitter taste, than when the humor disappears. In the case of Johnson’s film, I suppose it is better to laugh than cry.
