The Family Man
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Movie Reviews of The Family Man
Movie Review: A Romantic Fantasy That Works
Summary: 5 Stars
In the tradition of the best films that Hollywood ever had to offer comes this refreshingly honest movie that isn't afraid to say that you don't have to be rich, hip and cynical to be successful and happy with your life. "The Family Man," directed by Brett Ratner, stars Nicolas Cage as Jack Campbell, a man who took the "road less traveled," and turned his back on love for a career on Wall Street, and thirteen years later still doesn't realize how empty and shallow his life has become. Then something happens; on Christmas Eve, Jack does a good turn to the right person at the right time. His name is Cash (Don Cheadle), and he just happens to be a guy with, well, connections. And the next thing Jack knows, he's getting a "glimpse" of what his life would have been had he made a different choice all those many years ago. When he wakes up on Christmas morning, he's not in his bed in his penthouse apartment, but in a house in the suburbs, sleeping next to Kate Reynolds (Tea Leoni), the woman he once loved, but abandoned. Wall Street is history; he's now a crackerjack tire salesman at "Big Ed's," and he and Kate have two kids, Annie (Makenzie Vega) and Josh (Jake and Ryan Milkovich). Needless to say, Jack is confused; and the enigmatic Cash isn't about to let him in on what's going on-- that's for Jack to figure out on his own. So Jack has no choice but to go on living his life-- even if it's not really "his" life. And it becomes a journey of discovery; not only for Jack, but for the audience, as well. And what follows may be fantasy, but it's fantasy with a message, from some filmmakers who aren't afraid to tell it like it is, and they do it well.
What director Roth presents you with is an examination of what life is really all about, and what-- in the final analysis-- is really important. And make no mistake, this isn't a film that aims for the head, it aims for the heart, scores a bullseye and doesn't apologize for it. Is it pure, true, realistic, riveting drama? Of course not, and it never pretends to be. What it is, is a film that stays true to what it's all about and says some things that need to be said in this fast-food, cybersaturated world of the here and now. It's a poignant, well made and well acted film that appeals to the universal sensibilities that in one way or another reside within even the most jaded, modernized and "New Aged" individuals. Because it's an entreaty to the most basic of human needs and concerns.
Cage was the perfect choice to play Jack; he's got a natural, sympathetic look that makes him easy to like, and combined with the emotional aspect he brings to the character it makes Jack someone to whom it is so easy to relate. it's a performance that allows you to feel something; and that's really what this movie is all about, capturing that sense of humanity that is so often lacking in people's lives today. Cage makes it work, and he makes it work beautifully, because he lets you share Jack's frustration, his loss, his fears and, most importantly, the hope and the love he ultimately realizes has been missing in his life. It's a challenging role that Cage not only met, but surpassed with just the kind of exacting performance that was needed to put this story across.
Tea Leoni gives an excellent performance, as well, as Kate. It's a sensitive, sympathetic portrayal that serves the character and the story with great effectiveness. Leoni makes something special out of a character that could've been just the "female lead," with the purpose of being nothing more than the means of moving the story of Jack's self-discovery along. Instead, she makes it her story as much as his by making Kate an endearing, truly integral part of the film, and she fairly sparkles on the screen.
The supporting cast includes Jeremy Piven (Arnie), Saul Rubinek (Alan), Josef Sommer (Peter), Lisa Thornhill (Evelyn), Harve Presnell (Big Ed), Mary Beth Hurt (Adelle) and Francine York (Lorraine). There's no doubt that personal experience and frame of reference is going to play a big part in the way "The Family Man" is received by the audience. But Ratner, Cage, Leoni and everyone else connected with this project are to be commended for making an honest, heart-felt film with an important message about life in today's world. It's a film that says success isn't just being the guy at the top of the heap, that it's okay to just "be" whomever or whatever you are, as long as it's what makes you happy and content. It's a bold statement for a filmmaker to make today, and we can only hope that more artists will have the guts to make more movies like this in the future.
Movie Review: One of 2000's best films. Much better than expected.
Summary: 5 Stars
Brett Ratner's comedy, The Family Man, focuses on Jack Campbell, played by Nicolas Cage. Jack is now a wealthy Wall Street businessman who seems to have everything he ever wanted out of life. However, we learn that thirteen years before present day, he made a huge decision that completely changed his future. Jack was going off to London for a year, leaving behind his fiancee girlfriend. His girlfriend, Kate (Tea Leoni) asked him to stay with her, but he left her there at the airport, and never saw or talked to her ever again. Well, his "Roadless Travel" as he calls it, gets a wake-up call at a gas station when there is a hold-up having to do with a lottery ticket. Jack makes a purposal with the man (Don Cheadle), and they agree to trade the winning ticket for two hundred dollars. Unknowingly, the man holding up the store is an angel, and gives Jack a glimpse of what his life could've been like, had he stayed and married Kate. The next morning, Jack wakes up with dog slobber on his face, and his wife on top of him, and his eye opening experience begins.Yes, yes- you've all heard that this film is this generation's "It's A Wonderful Life", but what I like even more about this film rather than "Life" is its humor, the advantage this man has to this other life, and the romance formed between Cage and Leoni, rather than a horrifying alternate-reality where he learns how his life could have changed the world had he not been in existence.
This film is absolutely perfect. It has everything I want out of this genre. It doesn't go overboard, and it doesn't take itself way too seriously, or out of line. It creates humor, romance, suspense, and packs wonderful performances. It captures the momentum and power of "Life", and it makes this alternate life a good thing. I loved how Cage interacted with this new world. It was also fun to see him react to his job, his kids, his friends, and his low balanced checking account. What also rang the bells for me was when the film decided to give Jack the chance to get the best of both worlds. He was fit for the Wall Street job, and he could stay with his family at the same time. Just when you think that is just perfect and what should happen, Jack and the audience still realize they aren't getting the point which I coped with as well. Tea Leoni was magnificent! My favorite part of the film with her and Cage together centered around the chocolate cake scene. The shopping mall scene was fascinatingly humorous, and the way Jack turned his life around and learned how much more enjoyable his life would've been was truly a spectacle.
At one point with the filmmaking process, I learned that Nicolas Cage turned this film down two or three times, just because he thought the story was very corny. Director, Brett Ratner kept on pursuing Cage because he felt he would be perfect for the role. According to some of the special feature interviews on the DVD, Ratner convinced Nick to do a film that doesn't come knocking on his door too often. Cage finally OK'd it, and signed on, hoping that this film might give him a better image, as well as his hopes for this film to be successful in itself. It sure payed off.
This is Ratner's best film yet. It is absolutely fun. Every actor has an equal share and makes this movie excellent. The plot is ingenious and smart. The humor and romance excell beyond expectations. Nicolas Cage almost seems better as a family man rather than a hard-core action hero. There is absolutely nothing I would change with this film. It is fall down stupendous.
QUOTE: "Everything works for this film. I absolutely loved the whole thing from beginning to end! Tea Leoni and Nicolas Cage are the perfect duo. Brett Ratner makes his golden film right here, a film that could never be made any better. The humor soars, the romance shines, and the fun and dramatic aspect of the entire thing never lets go. This is a film to treasure, one that deserves a lot of gratitude. The Family Man is superb, and no one should deny it of that."
Movie Review: Far scarier than Jerry Maguire
Summary: 5 Stars
Far scarier than Jerry Maguire. Nicolas Cage plays this tremendously succesful investment banker who has everything life has to offer. Fantabulous Manhattan Penthouse, Ferrari, Babes, you name it.
Problem arises when he has the non-sense to intervene in a liquor store hold up.
He escapes with his life only to tell the would be robber that he has everything a chap could want. That said we know hes in for it. Vetreans of The Devils Disciple will immediately twig that Don Cheadles Cash character ( gettit?), the hold up artist is the Great Lucifer in disguise and that Nic Cages Jack Campbell is about to have a Fall from Grace and be cast into the eternal flames for crossing him.
How bad can things get one wonders ?
The answer of course is gruesome as Lucifer exacts a revenge well out of synch with the purported slight.
This poor mans life descends into the very bowels of Hades.
The first circle of Hell is when he wakes up in a New Jersey suburb with a wife and two kids.The wife is old flame ( gettit?) Kate played by Tea Leoni and Kate we know to be another spell cast by the Devil since we are asked to believe this woman is in her mid thirties, does voluntary work, has had two kids and looks like she could easily grace the centrefold of Playboys Hornycatholicschoolboysinengland Summer Special. I digress.
The kids of course are minions that have graced the lore of Anglo-Nordic/Celtic myth and legend through the ages. Outwardly they behave themselves but we know deep down they too are complicite in Jacks ruination.
Nic, God bless him tries to put his life back together. In much the manner of Its a Wonderful Life he experiences what the High Finance Corporate World is sans Jack except true to form the American Industrial Machine is moving along quite nicely oiled without him. He returns to New Jersey ( itself a prospect more daunting than a performance of RiverDance ) where he attempts with genuine New World optimism to put his life back together. There is a problem though and it was explored a few years back in Malachi Martins groundbreaking study of Demonic Possession Hostage to the Devil .
Nics character Jack is in the process of being perfectly possessed and taking on this nether world as not just viable but a tangible reality. At this point of course, a Priest, a Minister, a Rabbi should have been called for but Director Brett Ratner twists the knife in even further as Jack reflects on his life as a stunning Manhattanite and decides, devistatingly to us the audience that it really wasnt all that it was cracked up to be. In a scene intentionally reminiscent of the Garden of Eden Kate lures him back to New Jersey and away from the Apple with the juicy succulent temptations of domestic bliss and hard graft.
The final horrifying blow comes when we glimpse what her life would have been without him. She is set to embark on a career as a corporate exec lawyer in Paris but Cages Jack now perfectly possessed and more akin to a Body Snatcher places his own spell on her and lures her away from a life of glamour, luxury and access.
The final scene rolls the credits as we see both ghouls tete a tete in the airport bar no doubt hatching a fiendish plot to take over the world and populate it with New Jersey suburbanites.
Cage has never been better and Director Brett Ratner from a truly terrifying screenplay by David Diamond and David Weissman builds tension and menace with wonderfully composed understatement never stressing the obvious instead opting to let us the audience glean just enough information from each scene to forwarn us of Jacks impending doom.
Possibly the scariest movie this year.
Not to be missed.
Movie Review: Very well done, with a couple of false notes at the end
Summary: 5 Stars
By now you probably now more or less what the plot of this film is. If that plot sounds appealing, you will definitely like this film. Well written, well directed, and very well acted, it takes a potentially schmaltzy premise and makes a very enjoyable film out of it. Although the DVD box has the reviewer quote "Hilarious" on the front, for the most part this is an amusing and sentimental film, rather than a knee-slapper. Once you accept the fantasy premise, most of the film rings true. Sure, if the road not taken involves being married to Tea Leoni, the deck is stacked a bit. But I really bought into the emotional truth at the core of this film. My only quibble [SPOILER ALERT] concerns the ending. Once Jack has come to love his suburban Jersey life and then is jerked back into his investment banker life, his actions don't really seem convincing. After he tracks Kate down to her townhouse as she packs to leave for Paris, would he really turn away and leave without a greater effort to connect with her? And having gone to the airport to make one last attempt to convince her to stay, would he once again nearly turn away after making only another feeble effort? Seems inconsistent with his hard-driving nature and with the epiphany he had experienced in his Jersey life. The brief scene that immediately precedes these scenes in which he tells his investment banker colleagues that he buys into his NYC life isn't enough to justify the feebleness of his subsequent efforts to win back Kate. Clearly, these final scenes were meant to increase the drama of the eventual reconnection, but alone in the film they don't ring true to me.
Finally, there is a little bit of a glitch in the film. [Continued spoiler alert] At one point, Jack finds out that he and Kate moved from Greenwich Village to Jersey only after Kate became pregnant. Their oldest child is at most five (more likely four), and 13 years have past between 1987, when Jack left for London, and 2000, when the movie is set. So that means they lived in Greenwich Village pursuing their Manhattan careers for at least seven years before settling in Jersey - unless, implausibly, Jack began working at Big Ed's early on and was commuting back and forth every day from Manhattan to Jersey. A long enough time, you would think, for Jack to have made progress in the world of Manhattan finance, even without benefit of the London internship, and for Kate to have continued on her actual (non-pro bono lawyer) career path. Presumably, the filmmakers needed a significant span of time to make Jack's rise to the top of the investment banking world plausible and to match Nicholas Cage's age (although Tea Leoni could easily have passed for being in her late 20s), and making their kids older would have made them less cute. Unfortunately, though, the chronology doesn't quite add up. Still, a terrifically entertaining film (particularly at Christmas)!
Movie Review: mid-life crisis movie
Summary: 5 Stars
As has already been pointed out, this movie is incredibly predictable (like many great movies are). That is one of the wonderful things about a good story. It doesn't have to have lots of plot twists to keep you interested. As movie-viewers we simply agree to suspend our disbelief for a while and pretend that all of this is possible.
The parallels with "Its a Wonderful Life" are clear and obvious: The man finds out how his life would be different if he had made one simple choice differently in the past (or present). It is a fun little game to play.
But I think this movie goes beyond that. I think it also hearkens, in an allegorical way, to a man's mid-life crisis. Jack Campbell is as successful as he could ever dream of being. He has money, women adore him (at least some do), he has lots of power, a great apartment, everything he could want. But it is somehow empty.
Of course the movie takes place at Christmas (the time of year when many people's thoughts turn to family/friends) and he realizes that his life, while successful is inherently empty. His "boss" ("Peter Lassiter") is what Jack will become when he is older: "a cold heartless man who only cares about money" and how to get more of it. He secretly admires an underling "yes man" ("Alan") as someone who, while not as successful, does have a family for whom he cares deeply.
One night Jack experiences a "glimpse" (fantasy?) about what his life would be like if he had gotten married to his college sweetheart. The new life he enters is full of surprises (for him, at least). He is forced to live like the other half ("I'll get a funnel cake. It will be the highlight of my week"). Part of him yearns for his old life of excess and easy luxuries, but as the movie evolves he begins to see the advantages of his new existence in suburban New Jersey and simply takes "vacations" into his "former life" in the form of watching CNBC when his wife wants to make love and other similar situations. By the end of the "glimpse" he wants nothing to do with that life of power and money. He has found fulfillment. His fantasies no longer interest him as much as his life with his wife and kids. He lets go of that part of his life. In fact, at the end he admits that "nothing ever felt more real."
If you can get past the cliche moments, predictable nature and stereotyped characters (his best friend is as stereotyped as they come) this is a touching movie about what happens because of one simple choice and what we really care about in life.
Just a little side note: I thought the casing was odd. Every time I watch this movie I think, "Nicholas Cage and Tea Leoni are trying their hardest to be Mel Gibson playing Jack Campbell and Meg Ryan playing Kate Reynolds," but that's just me.