Well Deserved Praise

Very well executed

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is one of those sleeper surprises. POA draws you in, a family drama as your own might be, Hellish fun. A holiday treat. The side characters do exactly what they're supposed to do, amuse and contribute. The neighbors are a highlight of this film. Platt is the perfect discombobulated Dad. If you didn't know anything about K. Holmes, you'd be mildly impressed with her fluster. There's a wrench in the soup too, no spoiler here. This is a weekend afternoon under the blankets with popcorn and boozey-cider. An epic couples dilemma what-are-we-doing-today date-film. Disgustingly heart-warming. It's one of those stumbled-across and kept watching gems.

The premise of the movie is a simple one and basically summarizes the whole movie, "A wayward daughter invites her dying mother and the rest of her estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving dinner." The movie starts us off on that Thanksgiving morning. First, we are introduced to April, and her boyfriend Bobby who are living together in a shanty apartment in New York, and then to April's mother, father, and brothers and sisters in another location, who are preparing to make the trip to visit her. We aren't provided with any back story, except what we gather about the past from conversations that April's mother has with the rest of the family during their voyage.Honestly, I was finding myself slightly bored during the beginning of the movie. The film, although over an hour, manages to span over just one day, lending it a slow feel. The cinematography was somewhat unimpressive. The soundtrack is sparse, with most scenes not having any music at all, and the music that is present is humming just outside the viewer's awareness most of the time rather than being the main focus in any one scene. I found myself easily able to make prejudgments about each of the main characters based on their limited dialogues and their reactions to things going on around them. I stereotyped Beth as the movie's prim and proper "good younger daughter". She gave unsolicited advice with surprising frequency, and always seemed to try to distinguish herself as being the opposite of the "wild child" elder sister that she obviously secretly envied, if not admired. Timmy played an easygoing middle-child, cleverly juggling his role of responsibility as the one only other "man of the house" with the conflicting role of unimportance being in the middle tends to lend to a person. Bobby was the soft-hearted but firm father. You could almost feel his tension when you looked at him, empathize with his struggles to hold his family together, knowing that he would someday have to do it all alone.Finally, we come to April's mother, Joy. Whether Joy is an ironic name for her or not, I will leave for you viewers to decide. She comes across as jaded and sarcastic, with a sly sense of humor and a stubborn streak. Most of all though, she seems tired, the toll from her illness clear on her; the toll from her strained relationship with April, clearer still.Then of course, there's April herself. She's fierce, independent, and loyal. It isn't hard to see why she could've gotten into trouble in the past, but it also isn't difficult to see how she probably got out of it. This movie definitely has its funny moments, mostly stemming from the encounters with the characters that Apirl meets as she struggles to pull together her Thanksgiving dinner. Her family also has some adventures during their trip, starting (almost) with picking up April's partially senile grandmother from the nursing home. Despite its simplicity- or maybe because of it- this film will tug at your heartstrings in a way that you don't expect. At least, it certainly did mine, partially because I could personally identify with having a strained relationship with my own mother, even if it was just for a time. I found myself close to tears during some moments, which is rare.I think the message of the movie is, that love has power, that family is still family even when some of you don't fit in, some of you don't like each other too much, and some of you try too hard to be perfect, ultimately failing. Most fail, however, when they don't try at all. It all sounds trite and very cliché, but this film somehow delivers itself in a way that makes the message both memorable and believable. The cast had to carry so much and each member carried his/her share with significant grace.Happy Thanksgiving to everybody- hopefully this movie will help you to remember what the season is supposed to be about.

Handles some subject matter that you don't see very often in films. Well done but not artsy fartsy, with good solid performances given by everybody involved with this project. I would like to see more films like this around, and there are a few, some better than others, but I think good film can't be forced-they either happens or they doesn't. I suppose it might help if they start off with a good screenplay, and in this case it looks like they did.It is a nice alternative to watching the tidal wave of comics turned into movies that is all the rage today, that and syrupy romance comedies. To come to think of it there are a very high number of very lousy films out there at the moment, so even though this isn't new it is worth a look. I recommend it to people who are interested in becoming film makers, or to those who just appreciate a good yarn.

1st watched 1/21/2009 – 8 out of 10(Dir-Peter Hedges): Well done drama/comedy photographed kind of like a documentary but featuring realistic & funny characters throughout. Katie Holmes is excellent as the forgotten daughter who tries to put together a Thanksgiving dinner for her family to re-acquaint herself with them. The family doesn't like her that much but the mother is dying of cancer and it may be the last time she can see her, so they travel from their comfortable home to her big city apartment. Katie's characters' oven decides to stop working so she travels to neighbors finding an oven to cook the turkey and encounters a variety of unique characters(varying everywhere from friendly to mean). Her boyfriend escapes to do some business so she's on her own with this endeavor. Her quest to get the bird cooked and the dinner made makes her meet people she probably wouldn't normally and therefore makes new friends and some enemies. This is one of the fun parts of the story, the other this is the family's trip. The typical mixed-up family provides some comic relief to the movie despite their problems. Does it all work itself out in the end?? Well, I guess you'll have to watch the movie and find out!! Trust me, it will be worth it if you like funny, touching realistic movies.