Mr. Movie: “The Family Man” is worth a second look
In the last couple of weeks I’ve gone through some of my favorite holiday movies. That list does not — I repeat DOES NOT — include 1983’s “A Christmas Story” nor does it include “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”
Third on my favorite list is “The Family Man.” It is a classic example of why critics ought to see some films more than once before deciding whether it sucks or not. I ripped the movie in 2000. For a Christmas-themed movie it’s more copycat than original and at the time I called it a total waste of time.
Jack Campbell is a high-powered Wall Street broker. At one point in Jack’s life he found himself at one of those life changing forks. Jack bagged love and the family route and chose career. Making money and dominating the competition became everything to Jack. A modern-day Scrooge, Jack is so focused, and so driven that he even makes his staff work on Christmas Day.
On Christmas Eve Jack runs into Cash. He’s some sort of Karma-focused angel who thinks Jack made the wrong choice at that fork and sends him to the life he didn’t choose. There Jack sells tires at his father-in-law’s business, is the best bowler on his bowling team and is married to Kate.
They have two kids and a dog.
Not sure what happened to him, Jack is forced to go along until he can figure something out. It’s in the figuring out process that Jack predictably learns that love trumps success, power and money. It’s a second chance scenario ALA Jimmy Stewart’s light-bulb lighting realizations from “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
This is probably why “The Family Man” got a second chance from me and why it’s become one of my holiday favorites.
Before COVID, the holiday movie season was insane. The last five or so years it has slowed down a bit but in the year 2000 I was seeing eight to 10 movies in a week. By movie five or six like most critics, I was pretty burned out. “The Family Man” screened toward the end of one of those weeks.
Watching a movie on a couch in the living room is a lot more relaxing than wading through holiday traffic to get to a movie you don’t really want to see. The dozen watchings of “The Family Man” since 2000 have been in that comfort zone.
Though he won and Oscar and a Golden Globe in 1996 for “Leaving Las Vegas, this is the best Cage has ever been. Part of that is due to the chemistry he had with co-star Tea Leoni. She was fairly busy in the 1990s and did “Deep Impact,” “Bad Boys” and “Wyatt Earp.”
Leoni’s Kate is the perfect wife and a non-profit lawyer. Emphasis on the non-profit which irks Jack. She is also practical, passionate and loves their life.
It’s the perfect role for the blond-locked Leoni. “The Family Man” is also the best she has ever been and it’s no wonder that Jack eventually succumbs to her down-to-earth charms and ends up wanting to stay in his nondescript life.
In “Leaving Las Vegas” we found Cage believable as a drunk determined to kill himself via alcohol poisoning. In fact, early in his career Cage did a couple of pretty good action flicks and some other decent films in the 1990s and into the early 2000s. My favorite was his terrific tandem work with Sean Connery in “The Rock.”
The light never quite shined that bright in any of his other films. A caustic personality probably played a big part in his never attaining the superstardom of his contemporaries. In my book the main reason “The Rock” worked was because of Connery.
These days films starring Cage are never screened for critics. Not sure why but I suspect a big part of the reason has to do with criticism of his acting style. He has never been able to kick his stock two-dimensional character and transform him into someone with three of them.
“The Family Man” is one of the films that worked for him and one of the few that he managed to give a character multiple dimensions. You totally buy Cage as a finance-focused jerk and — like Jack — you finally get used to him as an average guy living a happy but average life.
At this point the question arises of whether it is Cage who is so good or is it a great script from a couple of screenwriters who haven’t done much since? David Diamond and David Weissman co-wrote the fun sci-fi flick, “Evolution” in 2001 and “Old Dogs” with Robin Williams and John Travolta 2009.
Other than that haven’t been seen much.
Whatever the reasons for the success of this film, the screenplay is a good one and the story of redemption and change definitely resonates. That’s especially true this year. It’s been a hard one for all of us.
I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for something positive. Like me, maybe you didn’t like “The Family Man” at the first viewing. I suggest a second try.
▪ Rated PG-13 for mature themes. It can be found on websites that sell DVDs and can be found on some streaming sources.
▪ Rating: 5 out of 5
This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie: “The Family Man” is worth a second look."