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It's a wonderful 'Family'
Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni deftly navigate a tale of alternative worlds that draws its theme from movies like Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life.
By PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 21, 2000
[Photo: Universal Studios.]
In The Family Man, Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) and Kate (Tea Leoni) are married, have two children and live in suburbia — much to Jack’s amazement.
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Spiritual rebirth is at the center of The Family Man, and director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) gives that theme the Hollywood treatment, ably delivering an entertaining romantic comedy that delights despite -- or maybe because of -- its high quotient of mush. It's a sentimental, saccharine piece of work sure to appeal to audiences disinclined to indulge in the season's more serious fare.
The Family Man, a fantasy that borrows from sources as varied as Dickens' A Christmas Carol and director-writer Peter Howitt's 1998 film Sliding Doors, is most derivative of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.
George Bailey, with the help of a pesky guardian angel, learned how his life and those of his family and friends might have played out had he not made the "right" decisions. Ratner's film sort of represents the flip side: How much more fulfilled might mergers-and-acquisitions superstar Jack Campbell be had he not made the "wrong" choice 12 years ago? Should he have blown off that London bank internship, and opted instead to stay close to his cute, adoring girlfriend, Kate (Tea Leoni)?
Nicolas Cage, easily bouncing back from his action-hero role in the dimwitted, disastrous Gone in Sixty Seconds, strikes the right tone as Jack, a Wall Street executive so driven by ambition that he works late on Christmas Eve, long after his colleagues have gone home.
Walking back to his luxurious penthouse apartment, he stops at a convenience store, and breaks up a potentially deadly struggle between a clerk and a street thug named Cash (Don Cheadle). "You brought it on yourself," Cash says, ominously.
Faster than you can say "what if?" it's Christmas morning, and Jack is in bed next to Kate, rudely awakened by the sight and sound of two cuddly rugrats, Annie, 6, (Makenzie Vega) and baby Josh (Jake and Ryan Milkovich).
Horror of horrors: He's in suburban New Jersey, making ends meet as a manager in a tire store operated by his pushy father-in-law (Harve Presnell). He drives a messy minivan, instead of his Ferrari. And camaraderie with a bland bowling-league buddy (Jeremy Piven) has replaced his friendships with high-power colleagues (Saul Rubinek and Josef Sommer).
Jack is a stranger in a strange land, and there's a lot of fun to be had watching Cage react to this vast wasteland of suburban homes, menial employment, boring parties, petty domestic squabbles, off-the-rack suits, dirty diapers and a hot-to-trot acquaintance (Lisa Thornhill). Even little Annie realizes something is askew. "You're not really my father, are you?" she asks, eyeing this man who would be her dad and deciding that the transformation must be the work of an alien invader.
Cage handily navigates these comic situations, and Leoni, last seen on the big screen two years ago in Deep Impact, brings dramatic agility to a straight-woman role that might be described as problematic: Kate, now a pro-bono lawyer carefully dividing her time between work and home, is the kind of woman who frowns on her husband's opportunity for a chance-of-a-lifetime job. You can't have both family life and professional fulfillment, the script suggests.
The Family Man, too, rather patronizingly tells viewers that it really is okay to have one spouse, two kids, a couple of pets, a mortgage and weekends dominated by kiddie soccer games and ballet classes. Thanks, Nic. Thanks, Tea. Thanks, Hollywood. Now I'll be able to sleep nights.
The Family Man
- Grade: B-
- Director: Brett Ratner
- Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tea Leoni, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Piven, Saul Rubinek, Josef Sommer
- Screenplay: David Diamond, David Weissman
- Rating: PG-13
- Running time: 125 min.
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