Day of the dead

The Skeleton Twins

Crit

Milo (Bill Hader): failed actor, gay; Maggie (Kristen Wiig): a serial adulterer pretending to be perfectly happy with her husband, Lance (Luke Wilson), who, let's face it, is the sweetest douche in the history of cinema. Both are permanently scarred by their father's suicide and their mother's bubbly indifference; both are scarred, too, by an incident in their youth in which one did something--either protectively or vengefully, but in any case life-alteringly--which the other has been unable to forgive in the ten years since.

The plot is mechanical--reconciliation made possible by simultaneous suicide attempts--but the characters are real and sad and lovely: each is the only person the other can ever love, which is awkward in so many ways.