A Family Thanksgiving (2010)

good back-story, and good acting

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

These movies, where a workaholic business person miraculously gets switch to an alternate life, seem to come out every year. I have a strike against them to start with because they always put the person in the middle of a new life without having any memory of anything in this new life. How can that experience help them in whatever way they are supposed to need help? But I guess it is supposed to be funny. I guess this movie did it as well as any of them, a la poop diapers.The little girl was the absolute high point of this movie. She was so adorable. I'm amazed they can get a kid that age, or even looks that age, to follow directions.Probably what influenced my dislike for this movie the most is that it made Claudia so incredibly unlikeable in the first half, that I found it hard to recover from that enough to like her in the last half. And this is another case of an instant 180 degree change in personality, which I don't buy.***SPOILERS*** And I totally hate what the story did at the end. There had to be a better way. If I understand what she did as the corporation's representative correctly, she would be disbarred at the least and more likely sued for millions. Nice happy ending that way, but then that didn't happen in the movie.

Claudia (Daphne Zuniga), a rising attorney, is very happy to be summoned to the office of her firm's managing lawyers. She believes she will be asked to become a partner, for, after all, she does work many hours and has won important decisions. Yet, as she soon finds out, now is not her time. Not yet. Instead, they plop still another difficult case in her lap, one they are taking from another colleague who is not making progress. So, if Claudia can bring victory to the firm, a partnership is hers. Swallowing her disappointment, she goes back to tell her staff they will be working until three on Thanksgiving Day, plenty of time for them to join their families for dinner. Also, she phones her work-at-home sister to tell her sib that, once again, she can't make it to their family celebration. When asked for good reasons, Claudia's explanation reveals that her own SISTER is getting a neighborhood group together to fight the company Claudia will be defending. Uh oh. Then, too, Claudia who picks up coffee each morning at 6, has always brushed off the smiles of a businessman named Bill (Dan Payne). Someone else has been watching Claudia, too, a mysterious woman (Faye Dunaway), who may just be the "alternate universe" fairy. She knows all and sees all. Therefore, to give Claudia a rude awakening, this woman plants Claudia in a "what if" new life. In this one, Claudia is married to Bill, having given up her career, and is the mother of two adorable children. But, wait, Claudia doesn't even know how to change a diaper or pack a lunch! Also, Bill thinks she is angry about a previous fight, but just how long can she give him the cold shoulder in the bedroom? Most importantly, she gets to know her sister's point of view about the case she could have had, and her sister may be right. Please, can't she just go back to her normal life, Claudia pleads, or does she really want to? This film is in the long tradition of such flicks as Sliding Doors and 17 Again, where one can go back in time and choose a different path to pursue. Happily, its not too much of a good thing, as the film is funny, clever, and sweet. Zuniga is a great and pretty comedian while Payne is a real find, quite handsome and appealing. The rest of the cast, including Dunaway, is nice as well. The look of the film, with its well-picked costumes, sets, and art direction, is winning as is the polished script and energetic direction. Hey, Thanksgiving is coming soon, as of this writing, but even if it weren't, this is a mood-setting movie that would aid in the true meaning of the holiday.

Single, high-flying attorney Claudia (Daphne Zuniga), tops in her class at Harvard Law, is focused on one thing: her career, and making partner at her this-is-your-only-life law firm. Her drive for success has predictably made her miss countless family events, and is about to do the same with this year's Thanksgiving at her sister's (Gina Holden, playing a stay-at-home mom), when Claudia is suddenly thrust by a mysterious figure (Faye Dunaway) into an alternate reality wherein she had given up the idea of practicing law years before in favor of having a husband (Dan Payne) and two children.If this story sounds somewhat familiar, perhaps you saw The Christmas Clause (TV 2008). The current movie takes the basic idea of the former, resets it from Christmas to Thanksgiving, and flips the situation, i.e., instead of a mom with three kids shown what her life would be like as a successful lawyer with all the material goods she could possibly desire, here the lawyer becomes the mom and is shown how much richer her life could be if she broadened her focus and looked beyond her career as the sole purpose of her life.While both movies take a similar route to reach a common goal, this "remake" is executed much more adeptly, and while still firmly rooted in the traditional Hallmark mold and formula, "Thanksgiving" dispenses with many of the clichés which made "Christmas" merely pedestrian.The acting here is uniformly good, but young Kennedi Clements as Claudia's alternate reality daughter, is a heart-stealer in this, her apparent movie debut.

It is a reasonable question to ask what Family Man would have been like if Nicholas Cage had played a workaholic career woman attorney instead of a male Wall Streeter. The producers of A Family Thanksgiving have answered that question. Don Cheadle has been recast as Faye Dunaway but Faye and the script make it a less entertaining part. The kids are older now while the spouse is a stranger instead of an old love. There are a couple nice twists to the Family Man plot. It is interesting to feel different emotional impact when the protagonist finding herself in various family situations is not a man as in Family Man. I was disappointed that the emotional peak of Family Man is missing due to one of the script differences--made me feel like I was watching a TV movie. Bottom line is I enjoyed it and intend to watch it again to examine more closely the emotional impact of the gender switch. But if you haven't seen either and can only see one, see Family Man.