Extended Family Relationships
Across these films, family rarely shows up as a simple bloodline unit -- it's grandparents, stepmothers, long-lost brothers, adopted daughters, and surrogate parents who force an outsider or estranged relative back into the fold. The recurring engine is a mismatched pair (a grumpy elder and a hopeful child, a mother and her wayward son, an addict and the sibling he can't escape) whose forced proximity becomes the actual story, whether played as slapstick, melodrama, or something stranger. Even the chaotic and absurdist entries use that same setup: someone unrelated or long-absent gets pulled into a household's orbit and has to renegotiate what obligation and belonging mean.
