A Kid Like Jake review – a film about gender that dodges any debate

A couple use their boy’s love of Disney dress-up to get him into a private pre-school in a film that fails to do its premise justiceA Kid Like Jake is an earnestly intended, seriously acted film, painful in various intentional and unintentional ways.

It is by the TV veteran Silas Howard, who was the first trans director of the show Transparent, and adapted by Daniel Pearle from his own award-winning stage-play.

But it’s a film that strenuously avoids its own potential for satire or humour, averting its gaze from the #firstworldproblems issue.

Claire Danes and Jim Parsons play Alex and Greg, a well-to-do New York couple: she’s a former lawyer turned stay-at-home mom and he’s a therapist.

They have a bright, imaginative four-year-old, Jake (Leo James Davis), and like many parents in their milieu, they have allowed themselves to get obsessed with getting Jake into an exclusive private pre-school.

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