Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader-two of the best comedic actors we’ve got-are so wonderful in The Skeleton Twins you can’t help dearly wishing that this isn’t the last time they star opposite each other. They play Maggie and Milo, siblings who haven’t seen each other in over ten years. After the death of their father when they were teens and being raised by their emotionally selfish and unavailable mother, they spent the time from high school onwards growing further and further apart. She chose the married life and and a normal job in their hometown back in New York.
He chose the less predictable path of acting in Los Angeles and bitterly coping with the disappointment of mostly waiting tables instead. The story begins with Milo sliding himself into the bathtub like a man with no intention of ever leaving before slitting his wrists (he leaves a one-line suicide note). The subsequent hospitalization forces these distant, estranged siblings reluctantly back into each other’s lives. Maggie takes him to her place to recover. In the span of a week or so, the grouchy singleton meets his square brother-in-law (played by Luke Wilson), painful episodes from their past resurface, and in scenes that range from ordinary to utterly remarkable, Wiig and Hader make these siblings into two achingly felt and intimately familiar characters.
What Milo doesn’t know is that when the news came of his brush with death, his sister was about to swallow a handful of pills. It’s not the only thing he doesn’t know about her life, with its facade of domestic normalcy. The Skeleton Twins, directed and co-written by Craig Johnson, has a surprisingly facile take on suicide (it’s also hard to watch its depiction of funny people ready to take their own lives without thinking of the still terribly upsetting passing of Robin Williams).
At the same time, the movie goes into some startlingly dark places with a couple lacerating scenes of familial wounds exposed that are so powerful they’re like an indie-comedy take on a Bergman film. Johnson aptly captures the way that siblings-especially ones as close in age as twins-can deeply love each other and still say the most stinging, shockingly cruel things to each other with ease as extensions of the same intense feelings. And the slowly revealed details about an older man that Milo had a relationship with (he’s played by Modern Family‘s Ty Burrell) and sees a few times during his visit are both icky and-for his character, at least-heartbreaking.
Johnson has a keen eye for juxtaposition. After Maggie cheats with with her scuba instructor in a public restroom, the next shot is her in the bathtub looking tormented and fielding a question from her clueless husband over whether they have any Hot Pockets left. He also works in some more light-hearted scenes between Wiig and Hader that play off how much fun to watch they are together (even in a small part as the married couple who ran the amusement park in the underrated Adventureland they were hilarious).
At one point Milo turns on Starship’s silly-serious pop gem “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” to win a smile from an angry, jaded Maggie, lip-syncing along with such energetic conviction that she eventually surrenders and joins him. The tune becomes the movie’s anthem while showing just how connected these two forever are. In another they suck on the nitrus in Maggie’s dental office, goofing around like big kids in exchanges that are so natural they feel improvised but apparently weren’t. The Skeleton Twins could have used some more moments like that one. Most comedies would be lucky to have any.
Luke Wilson in the straight-man role is very good. He makes this earnest and slightly-dull good guy funny (he’s the kind of person who mentions salsa dancing then goes on to explain what it is), yet with dignity–which doesn’t always seem the easiest thing for an actor to pull off. The laughs aren’t directed at him. Wiig in lighter and darker moments alike is terrific.
Her part may seem somewhat similar to the one she had in Bridesmaids, but it cuts even deeper (she also had shockingly straightforward role recently in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and was-I thought-by no fault of her own nearly wasted). You watch her finely tuned acting wondering who could possibly pull this off more deftly. She’s an actress of seemingly endless and dazzling comedic possibilities who grounds her characters in a frankness that’s real and relatable.
It’s Hader who is the most surprising however. He’s always been one of the more intriguing people Saturday Night Live has had in the last decade (like Wiig you watch him do incredibly spot on impersonations and show impeccable comedic timing without ever knowing exactly who he is or what he’s about) and has been amply funny in pics like Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. None of his roles to date have had the weight of this one. Some may wonder about him playing a gay character given his character of Stefon, the hilarious caricature of a big city promiscuous party animal on SNL, but even when decked out in women’s clothes and make up, he doesn’t go for cheap laughs or stereotype indulging.
He plays as well off Wilson’s decency and cheeriness as he does off Wiig’s comedic chops and dramatic heft. It’s a revelatory performance. The most poignant and felt scene in the entire movie belongs mainly to him as he remembers being in high school thinking that glory awaited afterwards if he was patient and that the jocks would never do any better in life. Things didn’t turn out as he planned. They so seldom do. The Skeleton Twins is smart yet has a disappointing ending that feels like something of a cheat both to the head and heart. But somehow even when the movie falters, it only missteps. It never lies.
About Author
