Amy, Charlotte, Jack, and I loved this story of two 40-something divorcés (male and female) who meet online and blend their complicated families while exploring nontraditional sex practices, i.e. kink. It combines rom-com and grown-up sex with modern family drama, including pronouns, and was well-received at the two live screenings I attended––the audiences laughed a lot.
Joey Slotnick and Amy Hargreaves have good chemistry as Charlie and Lisa and Slotnick's comic timing is impeccable. Their children are Jack Steiner, Shanna Strong, Lexie Bean, and Sarah Eddy, with a host of supporting players.
Director Jon Sherman and his now-wife Melissa Vogley Woods co-wrote the original story, setting it and shooting it entirely in Columbus, Ohio, a first for the city, with lovely photography by Fletcher Wolfe. Sherman, like the character Charlie, is a film professor at an Ohio college.
Almost all the songs featured in the movie are by Columbus bands (track listing below) and you can stream a four and a half minute suite of composer David Carbonara's score here.
Sherman and Woods consulted with members of the kink community and several of them appear on screen as well.
Slotnick's long resume includes fourteen episodes of Boston Public as Milton Buttle, six of Nip/Tuck as Merril Bobolit, two of The Good Wife, and two of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Hargreaves is best known to me at Maggie Mathison in twenty episodes of Homeland but she has worked a lot over the years. This is the feature debut for Steiner and Bean as well as Eddy's acting debut. Strong is new to me despite appearing in single episodes of some of my favorites: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Modern Family, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine among others.
Sherman has directed two other features (wrote the screenplay for one of them), one TV movie, and a short, and it's Woods' writing debut. Wolfe has dozens of credits but is new to me. Carbonara scored 90 episodes of Mad Men, two of The Romanoffs, more TV, and a handful of features, the only one of which I've seen is The Guru (2002), directed by his wife Daisy von Scherler Mayer.
They/Them/Us is now available on Video on Demand on iTunes, Prime Video, and more. It had a short theatrical run.
There are few reviews on Rotten Tomatoes since the movie is so new, but five out of six loved it.
As promised, here is the track listing of performers and song titles, copied from the end credits.
Snarls: Walk in the Woods
Leggy: Taffy
Camille Vogley Woods: Maddy's Violin Solo
Steven King: Seams Are Splitting
Pinegrove: Angelina
The Sonder Bombs: Pindrop
Body Farm: Body Farm
The Girls!: Keys to Your House
ManDancing: Glove Sweat
Beyonderers: Ultra Terrestrial
The MIT Symphony Orchestra: Come Scoglio from Cosi Fan Tutti
Palette Knife: Ponderosa Steak House
Super American: Date (You've Got Blisters)
Abertooth Lincoln: Queer and Loathing in Rowan County
Sven Kahns and Joey Sebaali: Split in Two
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