Focus Features

"All right" doesn't begin to describe it. "The Kids Are All Right" is wonderful. Here is a film that respects and enjoys all of its characters, the give-and-take and recklessness and wisdom of any functioning family unit, conventional or un-. The independently financed $5 million indie, picked up for distribution by Focus Features, is the easiest movie to love I've seen all year.

In writer-director Lisa Cholodenko's previous theatrical releases, the New York-set "High Art" and the Los Angeles-set " Laurel Canyon," the filmmaker proved adept at examining relationships from close quarters. She's especially shrewd at delineating how a vulnerable soul can be pulled into undiscovered country, perilous and exciting. Every action or transgression comes with a price, however, and that's why Cholodenko is so good; she sees the reasons behind everyone's behavior. Her films are well-made in a straightfoward, humanistic vein, yet emotionally expansive and open-ended, like all good fiction.

Lisa Cholodenko's wonderful "The Kids Are All Right" is about many things, but at its heart it's about a girl who's ready to fly away from her family's cozy L.A. nest. Eighteen-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska, of "Alice in Wonderland"), her pale face framed by sheets of hair that you want to brush away, loves her two moms, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), but she's easily irritated by them. A recent high-school graduate, she's beginning to assert her independence, and does so in an unusual way: At the urging of her younger brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson), she contacts Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the biological father/sperm donor whom the two kids have never met.

And that's the beauty of Cholodenko's film: It's not about Mia coming to terms with her gay parents, but with her straight nonparent. Her family is, refreshingly, presented with utter casualness — they are, in nearly all respects, just like any other family, and probably happier than most. Joni's irked that she's being urged to write thank-you notes; Laser hangs out with friends who might be a bad influence; Nic, a stressed-out physician, is self-medicating a little heavily with red wine; Jules, the floaty stay-at-home parent, worries about what she'll do as the kids leave the fold. But all clearly adore each other, despite their ups and downs; happy families, as Tolstoy told us long ago, are all alike.

When I say that Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right’ is a highly evolved sitcom, I mean it as the highest praise. The American sitcom, an offspring of the Frank Capra film, is one of our most accomplished and demanding art forms.

On the big screen, the art is practiced by such filmmakers as Nora Ephron, Ron Howard, Woody Allen, James Brooks, Pedro Almodovar, whose variation is the telenovela, and Nicole Holofcener, whose sleeper “Please Give” is still in theaters.

A type of arthouse version of “Will & Grace,” “The Kids Are All Right,‘’ co-written by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, centers upon a family with two moms: butch hospital worker Nic (Annette Bening) and more feminine, unfulfilled, aspiring landscape designer Jules (a transcendent Julianne Moore).

The women have two children, college-bound Joni (Mia Wasikowska of the recent “Alice in Wonderland”) and 14-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Joni is named after Joni Mitchell. Laser is named after - what? - a superheated beam of light.

The women each had a child using the same sperm donor, making Joni and Laser half-siblings. The hijinks begin when Laser decides to meet his and Joni’s sperm donor (i.e., father). It turns out to be, not Jim, which would make sense since “The Kids Are All Right” is a kind of “Jules and Jim” for a new generation, (with a dash of Pasolini’s “Teorema”) It turns out to be Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a neighborhood restaurant owner and fruit-and-vegetable farmer, motorcyclist and handsome, confirmed bachelor, who has no other children.

By mid-festival, the most sought-after film was "The Kids Are All Right," a revelatory look at a lesbian couple - played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore - raising teenagers, and the sudden appearance in their lives of their sperm donor. Director Lisa Cholodenko ("High Art," "Laurel Canyon") tells a story of a lesbian relationship over the long haul and the family they create.

I’m tempted to start this review by falling back on a tried-and-true movie critic formulation and saying something like “Lisa Cholodenko’s ‘Kids Are All Right’ is the best comedy about an American family since ...” Since what? Precedents and grounds for comparison seem to be lacking, so I may have to let the superlative stand unqualified for now.

Which is fine: Ms. Cholodenko’s film, which she wrote with Stuart Blumberg, is so canny in its insights and so agile in its negotiation of complex emotions that it deserves to stand on its own. It is outrageously funny without ever exaggerating for comic effect, and heartbreaking with only minimal melodramatic embellishment.

But its originality — the thrilling, vertiginous sense of never having seen anything quite like it before — also arises from the particular circumstances of the family at its heart. There is undeniable novelty to a movie about a lesbian couple whose two teenage children were conceived with the help of an anonymous sperm donor. Families like this are hardly uncommon in the real world, but Ms. Cholodenko (“Laurel Canyon,” “High Art”) and Mr. Blumberg have discovered in this very modern arrangement a way of refreshing the ancient and durable wellsprings of comedy.

The kids come off wiser and more mature in many ways than the adults responsible for them in the warmly funny and intelligent The Kids Are All Right.

This gem features five topnotch, multidimensional performances in one of this summer's most engaging films.

Director/co-writer Lisa Cholodenko gracefully weaves unabashed honesty into this tale of a modern family riding out unsettling changes fueled by individual searches for identity.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple comfortably raising their two teenage children. The family's lives are upended when 15-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and his 18-year-old sister, Joni (Mia Wasikowska, named after Nic's favorite singer, Joni Mitchell), track down the anonymous sperm donor partly responsible for their existence. Fascinated by the charismatic Paul (Mark Ruffalo), an organic restaurateur, the kids warm to the man they refer to as "our donor dad."

Everything about this film rings true, from the dialogue to the California homes and evocative musical score.