Accidental Family: Movie Review

Bad premise, awful comedy and misguided romance.

Accidental Family starts with a bad premise and somehow gets worse. Its morale of uplifting family values doesn’t add any genuine sweetness that it’s supposed to. It’s an over-wrought romantic dramedy that has poorly formed messages on top of bad acting, awful comedy and misguided romance. One shouldn’t be surprised when a story that starts with the idea “I’ll fake being somebody’s family member in order to get them to fall in love with me” isn’t good.		2021 Directed by: Jason Hudson Screenplay by: Jason Hudson Starring: Kinsey Leigh Redmond, Justen Jones
Kinsey Leigh Redmond as Olivia starts with over-the-top comedy which is way too exaggerated to be funny. She’s frantically talking to herself as she’s about to meet her crush, a surprise scramble ensues and she ends up knocked out on the floor. When she wakes up she’s in grandma’s night gown and knotted hair all over the place. Apparently it’s hilarious that she looks like a mess. They have mistaken her as Olivia their long-lost relative while she’s actually a different Olivia the person delivering their family genealogy box. She knows the mix-up instantly but instead of correcting anybody she pretends to be the other Olivia because Alex is hot. The problems here are endless. Not the least of which is that usually people don’t fall in romantic love with relatives. This Olivia is supposed to be a genealogy expert except at no point do they ever identify how the other Olivia is even related. They keep calling her a long-lost relative who has now found her family but they never even make a connection like her father is Grandpa’s nephew, or something, anything. An actual genealogy expert would be able identify the relation. Another problem with Olivia, the supposed genealogy expert, is that she can’t even identify her own family tree. The film does at least offer a reason why, but the big reveal at the end is ridiculous. It requires a level of suspension of disbelief that most people don’t have, and when the writers finally attempted a family tree, they never actually did the math because that relationship is essentially impossible. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself since that’s just the inedible icing on top of a very stale cupcake. Most of the movie is Olivia keeping up this charade that she’s related to this family while she works to break-up Alex and his evil blonde fiancée, a cartoon villain who takes great delight in miraculously finding the real Olivia to expose the main Olivia’s deception while having loud secret phone calls where she plots to steal Alex’s family’s home. The right move for Alex is to not date or marry either of these women, but alas Accidental Family isn’t smart enough for that.

Available to stream on Hoopla. Available to rent on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, etc.

Available to rent on iTunes.

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