Friends With Kids, Seven magazine review Friends With Kids is a salutary tale of the complications that people get into by struggling to avoid complications. Jennifer Westfeldt wrote, directed and stars as Julie, a broody Manhattan-dweller who looks on in horror as her chic, coupled-up friends have babies, and almost immediately turn into wild-eyed, sleep-deprived argument-junkies who move to Brooklyn "for the space" and watch their marriages melt. It's a fresh take on the old story of parenthood, often wittily observed, and Westfeldt (an appealing cross between Jennifer Aniston and Felicity Kendal) makes a likeable lead. The scenes between the bickering couples are both painful and funny, culminating in a vicious burst of dinner-party "truth-telling," conducted by Ben (Mad Men's Jon Hamm, acting as a kind of manic high priest of disillusion) with sideswipes at his weeping wife Missy (Kristen Wiig). The trouble is that Hamm and Wiig's disintegration as a couple, even too briefly portrayed, is much more compelling than Westfeldt and Scott's patchy evolution into one. The weakest link is Scott's character, Jason, whose air of waspish over-intimacy belongs more to the rom-com stereotype of the gay best friend, but is written uneasily into the role of romantic lead. By the closing scene, an unwise mixture of crudity and sentimentality, I was wondering how to rewind to the rows.