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- The Family Man
(Reviewed November 21, 2000, by James Dawson)
- Insultingly condescending "It's a Wonderful Life" ripoff, made by a bunch of people who probably are quite happy to be wealthy and carefree, even though their movie is one long
paean of praise for the pathetic, penniless, pack-up-the-preschoolers-in-the-minivan proletariat. This movie is so dishonest and insincere that the suburbanites across America's heartland who pay good
money to see it would be forgiven for storming Hollywood, kicking all of the moguls out of their mansions, and turning the Beverly Center into a new Bastille.
Nicolas Cage plays a fabulously rich single guy with a Ferrari, a blond, a Manhattan penthouse co-op and (sniff, please pass the tissues) no wife and kids. Don Cheadle steps in to play guardian
angel Clarence to Cage's George Bailey by giving him a glimpse of what life would have been like if Cage had stuck with his college sweetheart 13 years earlier, instead of jetting off to London to take a
job. Cage wakes up on Christmas morning to find himself in a New Jersey house with a wife, a little girl, a baby, and a job as a tire salesman.
The unconvincing admiration that this story purports to have for the Joe and Joelene Six-Packs of the world is severely undercut by the obvious contempt in which the filmmakers hold those very
same have-nots. On the one hand, Cage's family and neighbors are supposed to exemplify the simple joys of middle-class family life. On the other hand, the filmmakers go out of their way to make
everyone who is not rich look vulgar, tasteless, strange and stupid. Oh, boy, more jokes about jerks in Jersey. How original!
I know I say this a lot about movies I dislike, but I did not believe a second of this story. I didn't believe that Cage and his alternate-life wife (played by the stunning Tea Leoni, about whom more
later) would turn into contented, ambition-free, blue-collar bumpkins just because they got married and "settled down." I didn't believe that Cage's character would be a guy who would take up bowling, or
settle for working in a tire store, or that Tea Leoni would make next to no money as a pro-bono lawyer even though they had two kids to feed. I didn't believe that Leoni would object to Cage suggesting that
they move to NYC when he gets an offer for a great job there that actually has a future. (When she goes into a sappy spiel about how she had hoped they would live out the rest of their lives in their New
Jersey house, it is easy to imagine the oily, 20-something rewrite guys down at the studio elbowing each other and guffawing, "Man, the rubes will really go for this schmaltz!")
But the dishonesty of this movie goes much deeper than that. Imagine how much different, creepier and better this movie would have been if Cage's alternate-life wife, instead of being played by
foxy, frisky, Playmate-pretty Tea Leoni, had been portrayed by someone who looked more like the "drab, sloppy mommies" that sex-deprived husbands are always writing in to Ann Landers to complain
about. You want ridiculous? Huge-busted, blue-eyed Leoni is more beautiful by far than the hot, slinky mistress that Cage had in his top-of-the-world, rich-guy life! And she is miles better looking than a
cheap-looking neighbor who tries to strike up an affair with Cage. (That subplot is left dangling with no resolution, making viewers wonder if a later scene ended up on the cutting-room floor.)
Now, I'm not saying that every woman in the world falls apart after dropping a couple of kids. But could we at least see some stretch marks, maybe a droopy ass, some crow's feet, anything to
indicate that she has a few miles on her? If you're stacking up a moneyless mother of two against the kind of tail that a Manhattan millionaire can score, and if your point is supposed to be that "true wuv" is
what really matters, then...oh, never mind.
Also, I hated the way this movie jumped from scene to scene over the course of several WEEKS in Cage's "alternate life" without Tea Leoni catching on that he was not the guy she married. (Even
Cage's preschool-age daughter knew something was up, but God forbid that his law-school-educated wife should detect anything amiss.)
Here is what I would rather have seen in "Family Man": Lots of dead-of-night shots of Cage nursing a bottle of whiskey, weeping and praying and shouting for God to give him back his former
high-flying lifestyle, yelling like a madman and breaking things when the kids get out of hand (which they never do, unless you count a "gosh, how funny" diaper-changing scene that expects everyone to
laugh uproariously at a baby boy's fountain of whizz). Maybe he would get violent with Leoni after another grinding day down at the tire store. He throws a few punches, then goes out looking for a
ten-dollar whore behind the bowling alley. That's where the cops find him. Later, as Cage is being gang raped in a jail cell, his guardian angel reappears, takes a look at the situation, and says, "Jesus,
buddy, you really did have a wonderful life!"
Back Row Grade: D- (saved from an "F" by the "D"-cup "D"-lights of "D"-licious Tea Leoni)
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