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About the Director

 Craig Johnson’s first feature film, True Adolescents, starring Mark Duplass and Melissa Leo, premiered at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival. He has written two films for 20th Century Fox and was a member of the inaugural Fox Writers Studio. He holds an MFA from NYU's graduate film program and a BA in theatre from the University of Washington. The Skeleton Twins is his second feature.

Well, it is and it isn't. Maybe I should also mention that Milo's suicide note reads, ''To whom it may concern, see ya later'' with a smiley face underneath. Or that the ringtone on Maggie's phone when she gets the call from the hospital is the Growing Pains theme. Like Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo in 2000's You Can Count on Me, Wiig and Hader play estranged siblings who haven't spoken for a decade but who reunite and slowly realize that as much as they can't stand one another, they're also the only ones who truly get each other. They're two broken souls secretly hoping the other might have the spiritual Krazy Glue they need.

Milo, a gay, depressed wannabe actor in Los Angeles, returns home to New York's Rockland County and moves in with Maggie and her sunny, frat-boyish husband, Lance (an excellent Luke Wilson). Both Maggie and Milo are masters at keeping secrets and sabotaging whatever happiness they manage to inadvertently bring into their lives. But for a while at least, they fall back into being the same kids who shared confidences, played hers-and-hers dress-up, and finished each other's sarcastic, smart-ass jokes. In the film's funniest scene, Wiig and Hader do a lip-synch duet to Starship's schmaltzy anthem ''Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now.'' As wince-inducing as that reads in print, it's impossible not to smile watching it on screen.

Of course, we know that whatever caused Maggie and Milo to stop talking is bound to resurface. And it does, right on cue. The main problem with the film is that too many of the beats created by director/co-writer Craig Johnson (True Adolescents) feel as programmed as the outline of a screenwriting manual (especially the maddeningly improbable ending). Still, the two costars elevate the film beyond formula. Their onscreen rapport is infectious and believable. Wiig has done this kind of heavy lifting with a light touch before in both Bridesmaids and Friends With Kids. Hader, though, is the film's real surprise. It would have been easy for him to turn Milo into a gay cartoon like his after-hours alter ego Stefon. But he resists the temptation to go for easy laughs and broad strokes and delivers something darker and deeper. It's a shockingly vulnerable performance, one of the best I've seen all year.