Christmas may be a time for giving, a time for sharing but the only thing Hollywood has shared with us recently around the Yuletide season is an endless string of insipid, nauseating movies. Over the past few years we've had the remake of Miracle on 34th Street, Jingle all the Way, The Santa Clause and The Grinch . Ever since the likes of Home Alone at the start of last decade, Christmas movies have forgotten how to be fun and indeed have fun. They're either lost in sentiment or dumbed down all-too excessively in an attempt to reach their childish target audience. The Family Man falls foul to both faults, not so much "dumbed-down" as smothered in a painful simplicity that borders on the insulting.
Jack Campbell is an uber rich businessman, working on Wall Street, obsessed with money and maintaining his very single, but sex-filled life. Relationships mean nothing to him. One day, he receives a blast from his past; a phonecall from Kate Reynolds, a college sweetheart. He wakes up the following morning, and finds himself in an alternate reality, one in which he had stayed with Kate and is now married with two kids. He is forced to decide which life he truly wants.
The Family Man is a simple by-the-numbers movie with all the subtlety and smarts of a live-action Disney feature. It is painted in broad black and white strokes, never attributing the audience with a semblance of intelligence. According to this movie, life is simple, you can either be a successful businessman, earning bucketloads of money while living a solitary, empty life or have a perfect, loving, caring family. There is no middle ground. Kids are sweet, adorable urchins who pwonounce evewy "r" in that cute wittle manner. Above all, MONEY IS EVIL. This "intriguing" notion is hammered into our heads time and again without any respite. The ending makes matters all the worse, copping out in the most cliched of ways - NO SPOILERS HERE - taking away what little charm the movie may have had.
Nicolas Cage has led an interesting career. He started acting via family connections - namely his uncle, Francis Ford Coppolla - then branched out on his own, carving an interestingly quirky niche for himself, playing a whole list of manic characters. As the nineties found their footing, he relaxed into the new decade as a comedic leading man before winning an Oscar and further fame in a brief dramatic outing courtesy of Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas. As if to further prove his obvious eccentricity, having won that prestigious award, he turned himself into an action hero for the late-nineties and now seems entrenched in Hollywood mainstream. Overall, Cage has had an enduring and enjoyably eclectic career but with Family Man, his creativity has seemingly ground to a halt. Here, his performance is basically a greatest hits compendium, recycling various characters from his ouevre into a fairly watchable if overly familiar whole.
As Cage's love interest, Tea Leoni proves once again her lack of any discernible talent. She is an actress who would be more at home in daily installments on a soap opera. From Bad Boys to Flirting with Disaster to Deep Impact, she has never shown an inkling of depth. She is very much a "surface actress", not one emotion ringing true, coming from within. Unlike her aforementioned movies, her role here is of utmost importance so with her obvious inadequacies she proves a very fatal flaw. However, Don Cheadle shows up for a sum total of seven minutes, each minute a welcome relief from the shallow mess around him. Cheadle is a highly under-valued actor who Hollywood continually brushes aside in favour of his more popular peers ie. Sam Jackson, Denzel Washington et al. Don Cheadle's obvious charisma has been evident in various movies - Bulworth, Out of Sight, Boogie Nights, he even scraped through the horrendous Mission to Mars with a shred of dignity intact - yet he has still to gain leading man status, something he richly deserves.
At the end of the day, only the most undemanding movie watcher will get anything from Family Man. There's nothing interesting or even slightly unique about it. If anything, the director of this film should have been given me some idea what to expect. Brett Ratner, the man behind Chris Tucker's career is someone rarely equated with subtlety or real human drama and this shows quite clearly through every frame of the movie. Nicolas Cage carries it all rather well and he is really the only saving grace - Cheadle's part is much too small - but if you like movies with substance steer well clear of this, at times truly frustrating mess. |
