"Indie," like "hipster" or "dudebro," is one of those Rorschach Tests of words. Maybe it once had a clear definition, but now it means whatever you want it to mean. It's an easy, even shallow, way to categorize someone or something, and with just a modicum more effort, we could dig beneath the surface and discover the hidden complexities.
That being said, man, is "The Skeleton Twins" ever an indie movie. From sad sacks staring blankly out a moving car window to sad sacks screaming obscenities to themselves after making particularly grueling mistakes to sad sacks lying morosely in bathtubs, director and cowriter Craig Johnson never breaks the surly bonds of his Guide To Getting Picked Up At Sundance, eschewing genuine human moments for the limply dour.
Remember "The Savages," that lovely 2007 dramedy of adult sibling rivalry with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney? There's a movie that found time for honesty, thoughtfulness, and even a few moments of levity between. "The Skeleton Twins" instead never met a cliche it couldn't mistake for a breakthrough.
When we meet Milo (Bill Hader), a struggling, gay actor in Los Angeles, he's alone at home, slashing his wrists in a bathtub. Smash cut to Maggie (Kristen Wiig), his twin sister living in New York, on the verge of swallowing an overdose of pills, but something's holding her back (a lazy attempt at twin telepathy or something, I guess) when she gets the phone call about her brother. Milo comes to stay with her and her amiable doofus husband Lance (Luke Wilson), allowing for the twins to reconnect for the first time in ten years and open festering wounds.
Lets talk about Hader and Wiig. God knows they deserve it. If anyone can convince us "The Skeleton Twins" is anything more than a limp exercise, that there's a forest in them thar trees, it's these two. Casting them is almost a cheat on Johnson's part, cashing in on their public relationship as SNL cast members and filling holes in the writing with their pre-established chemistry. But hey - if it works, it works.
Where lesser actors might not see past the flat characterizations and few easy traits, these two find the infinite. They create rounded, realized individuals from the ground up, allowing Milo and Maggie to grow beyond symbols of Johnson's typewriter into distinct people we feel like we know. They singlehandedly make "The Skeleton Twins" worthwhile.
That's not just good acting. That's heroic acting.
One scene between them in particular arrives halfway through the picture. We know Maggie cheats on Lance and has done it again. Hating herself and the lies she inflicts on her undeserving husband, she heaps all her anger onto Milo. But her brother doesn't flinch, seeing his sister is hurting, and instead walks to the stereo, playing Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now." Suddenly Milo comes alive, lip syncing to the song with all the force and passion of someone who's going to cheer up the person he loves now. Maggie resists as long as she can, but even she can't hold out, and soon they're putting on a lip sync concert in their living room.
It's an exuberant, downright life affirming moment, played with heart pounding gusto by Hader and Wiig. Even the most jaded member of the audience would have trouble feeling anything but temporary, unbridled happiness. It also illustrates everything wrong with the movie around it. For a few shining, fleeting minutes, "The Skeleton Twins" forgot it was about blank slates and instead became about these two people right here.
Too bad it reverts almost immediately back from the color to the grey. Johnson has two potentially sublime characters here, each with their own quirks and faults and hopes and broken promises, yet he hampers them with a screenplay that relies too much on convenience and plot contrivance. Sibling enjoying an illicit relationship with someone they shouldn't? Of course the sibling leaves their cell phone out for caller ID to be visible.
These aren't people making choices. This is a screenwriter shuffling around the pieces. The final scene, in particular, relies on a character knowing something he or she absolutely should not know, only because Johnson is trapped and needs it to happen.
"The Skeleton Twins" is a dour movie about dour subjects, no question about it. Depression, suicide, homophobia, pedophilia, infidelity, absent parents, and alcohol abuse are just a few items on the checklist. There's a difference between a depressing movie and a just plain lifeless one, though, and it's not something you fix simply by adding more jokes - no one's looking to the "Irreversible" DVD for a deleted pie fight. All you need is passion for the story you're telling.
Johnson pulls off a few genuinely lyrical shots, and between the indie clap trap, there exists some genuinely cutting conversations about depression and how adult siblings reconcile who they were as kids versus who they grew up to be. But ultimately, "The Skeleton Twins" lies like the dead fish Wiig brings home that play an all-too-obvious symbol.
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