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MINI MOVIE REVIEW:
In spite of capable performances, especially by Katie Holmes and Patricia Clarkson, "Pieces of April" ends up
being the very definition of a "small" indie movie. Unfortunately, too small to be worth spending either your time
or your money seeing at your local theater.
This movie is a disappointment as Oliver Platt and Patricia Clarkson and, especially, the captivating and personable Katie
Holmes should have been given a better screen opportunity to shine.
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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
I was really looking forward to seeing "Pieces of April" as the reviews have been largely positive (Note the
82% critical rating above) and I have admired actress Katie Holmes ever since I saw her costar as a captivating college student
in "Wonder Boys"(2000), one of my all time favorite movies.
While everyone can remember a family dinner from hell of their own, this story about the Thanksgiving dinner from hell
for the Burns family fails to light a candle of interest. The characters are strangely distant and the story largely did not
involve me or interest me. This is a tragedy as a lot of top flight screen talent is wasted in this movie.
The screenplay writer and director, Peter Hedges, does not give us an emotional background that is original, minor characters
that are memorable, or dialogue that is captivating and intelligent. It is clear that his talents lie more towards the directing
of actors than in the writing of their dialogue.
I came out of the theater hugely disappointed with this movie. "Pieces of April" isn't a bad film. The acting
is more or less first rate, but, to be honest about, this film bored me to tears. The emotional connection that I must have
with a movie and its actors just never developed during the course of this movie.
This is the kind of a movie that you might want to rent on a slow night when you want to see a capable performance by
Patricia Clarkson as an embittered and acerbic mother who is trying to cope with her approaching death and the one last chance
to reconcile with her estranged eldest daughter.
Or a night a few years from now when the very endearing and charming Katie Holmes is a major movie star and you might
want to research some of her earlier roles in small movies such as this. An interesting point of note is the fact that she
has a better fleshed out character in her much smaller role as a bright literary college student in "Wonder Boys"
than she does in this movie as the star, a rebellious young adult given to the Gothic mode of dress, metal piercings, tattoos,
odd colored hair, and a new life and love in a run down, graffiti splattered tenement building far from the placid upstate
New York home where she was raised.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Jim Burns (Oliver Platt) sleepily rolls over in his bed and feels for his wife, Joy (Patricia Clarkson), only to find
her side of the bed empty and cold.
Now instantly awake, he gets up and goes to each of his children's rooms to inquire after his wife. She is in neither
bedroom and she also is not to be found downstairs. Oliver finally discovers her strangely sitting by herself in the car in
the garage waiting for the rest of the family to get ready for their Thanksgiving Day trip to New York City to visit their
eldest daughter, April (Katie Holmes), who has promised to make a special dinner for them.
Joy dreads making the trip. She is constantly sick from the cancer treatments and doesn't have long to live. This is,
in fact, the main and perhaps even the only reason that Oliver has been able to talk her into making what will be for her
a very arduous journey. Furthermore, she has been estranged from April for many years. April has always wanted to take a different
path in life, and her rebellion and the rejection of the values of her parents has always been very hurtful.
Oliver soon has rounded up and fed the two remaining Burns children, Beth (Allison Pill) and Timmy (John Gallagher, Jr.)
and they are off on their adventure trip to the big city many miles away. First they have to pick up their grandmother, Dottie
(Alice Drummond), an elderly women suffering from Alzheimer's who only has occasional bouts of lucidity. The two kids and
their grandmother are stuffed into the back seat of the family station wagon and they take off.
Their drive is interrupted by the frequent bickering about the trip and the more frequent pit stops so that Joy can visit
the restroom to vomit. Both Beth and Joy wish out loud for the trip to be canceled and for them to go home to what will assuredly
be a much quieter Thanksgiving dinner. Joy bitterly pulls out a picture album and looks at pictures of what her breasts used
to look like before her double mastectomy and what she looks like now with her breasts removed and a long hideous scar running
across her chest.
April has problems of her own. She wakes up with her new love, Bobby (Derek Luke), in their new apartment home on the
third floor of a graffiti splattered building in a crime ridden tenement section of the City. He makes a Thanksgiving gift
to her of a pair of wild turkey salt and pepper shakers, which falls surprisingly flat as it turns out that April had broken
one of these "very expensive" shakers at home when she was a child and her mother never forgave her for it. How
expensive? Well, Bobby admits to having paid all of fifty cents for them at a flea market.
April sends Bobby away as she wants to delay the shock to her parents that her new boyfriend is Black. Bobby spends the
morning in a leisurely, though pointless, cruise through town on his motorized scooter all the while hearing from all his
friends that an unknown "Tyrone" is looking for him.
April starts to stuff the turkey. It is obvious that she has never cooked before and doesn't know the first thing about
cooking. Like all neophytes, she thinks that reading the directions will somehow transform her into a capable cook. The large
turkey is dropped on the floor and Bobby helps her pick it up before he leaves. Her "stuffing" of the bird, if it
can be called that, is the most humorous element of the movie.
April is horrified to find that her oven does not turn on after she has placed the turkey inside. She calls the landlord;
no answer. She calls others; no help is to be found anywhere. She runs in panic up and down the stairwell of her building
pounding on the multi-locked doors of each apartment begging for help. Most don't open. One is filled with the hissing of
cats inside.
Finally, she receives aid from an unlikely source, a sweet elderly Black couple, who take her into her home and our hearts.
Evette and Eugene (Lillian White and Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) generously offer the use of their oven, but only for two hours as
they have a Thanksgiving dinner of their own planned. This will at least give April some time to search for aid elsewhere
while her family sized turkey is cooking in their oven.
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