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The Family Man

The Family Man

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $11.24
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Family Man
Review: Nicolas Cage Did a great Acting Job in the movie if you Love
Nicolas Cage your going to love this movie I rate this with A+

The Tape came in good condtion and in good record time

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Suprisingly Good
Review: Any person married with kids should find this movie funny.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Far scarier than Jerry Maguire
Review: Far scarier than ' Jerry Maguire. '
Nicolas Cage plays this tremendously succesful investment banker who has everything life has to offer. Fantabulous Manhattan Penthouse, Ferrari, Babes, you name it.
Problem arises when he has the non-sense to intervene in a liquor store hold up.
He escapes with his life only to tell the would be robber that he has everything a chap could want. That said we know he's in for it. Vetreans of ' The Devil's Disciple ' will immediately twig that Don Cheadle's ' Cash ' character ( gettit?), the hold up artist is the Great Lucifer in disguise and that Nic Cage's ' Jack Campbell ' is about to have a Fall from Grace and be cast into the eternal flames for crossing him.
How bad can things get one wonders ?
The answer of course is gruesome as Lucifer exacts a revenge well out of synch with the purported slight.
This poor man's life descends into the very bowels of Hades.
The first circle of Hell is when he wakes up in a New Jersey suburb with a wife and two kids.The wife is old flame ( gettit?) Kate played by Tea Leoni and Kate we know to be another spell cast by the Devil since we are asked to believe this woman is in her mid thirties, does voluntary work, has had two kids and looks like she could easily grace the centrefold of Playboy's Hornycatholicschoolboysinengland Summer Special. I digress.
The kids of course are minions that have graced the lore of Anglo-Nordic/Celtic myth and legend through the ages. Outwardly they behave themselves but we know deep down they too are complicite in Jack's ruination.
Nic, God bless him tries to put his life back together. In much the manner of ' It's a Wonderful Life ' he experiences what the High Finance Corporate World is sans Jack except true to form the American Industrial Machine is moving along quite nicely oiled without him. He returns to New Jersey ( itself a prospect more daunting than a performance of RiverDance ) where he attempts with genuine New World optimism to put his life back together. There is a problem though and it was explored a few years back in Malachi Martin's groundbreaking study of Demonic Possession ' Hostage to the Devil .'
Nic's character Jack is in the process of being perfectly possessed and taking on this nether world as not just viable but a tangible reality. At this point of course, a Priest, a Minister, a Rabbi should have been called for but Director Brett Ratner twists the knife in even further as Jack reflects on his life as a stunning Manhattanite and decides, devistatingly to us the audience that it really wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. In a scene intentionally reminiscent of the Garden of Eden Kate lures him back to New Jersey and away from the Apple with the juicy succulent temptations of domestic bliss and hard graft.

The final horrifying blow comes when we glimpse what her life would have been without him. She is set to embark on a career as a corporate exec lawyer in Paris but Cage's ' Jack' now perfectly possessed and more akin to a ' Body Snatcher ' places his own spell on her and lures her away from a life of glamour, luxury and access.
The final scene rolls the credits as we see both ghouls tete a tete in the airport bar no doubt hatching a fiendish plot to take over the world and populate it with New Jersey suburbanites.
Cage has never been better and Director Brett Ratner from a truly terrifying screenplay by David Diamond and David Weissman builds tension and menace with wonderfully composed understatement never stressing the obvious instead opting to let us the audience glean just enough information from each scene to forwarn us of Jack's impending doom.
Possibly the scariest movie this year.
Not to be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This movie surprised me!!
Review: Who could imagine a movie directed by Mr. Brett Ratner (Rush Hour), among all directors in the world, can be a subtle and moving experience? There's no stereotypical situation. Even the stock suburban Jersey characters are handled with normalcy. Every situation is portrayed with realism and honesty. The story line is solely based on Mr. Cage's character's view point. It feels real because he's not immediately embracing his family lifestyle. Through out the better part of the movie, he wanted to go back to his high-flying life as a single Wall Street player. The change of heart is so subtle and skillfully handled by the screenwriters that you are totally convinced by the time he realized what he missed from his 'glimpsed' life with Miss Leoni and the kids.

Miss Leoni is very believable in wardrobe and demeanor as an Ivy-league educated attorney turned into a Jersey wife. She's not perfectly made-up, not a stick, and has a real glow and happiness as a wife and a mother (could it be the happy marriage with Mr. Duchovney and having two kids in real life?). And the chemistry between Mr. Cage and Miss Leoni is palpable to say the least.

Watching the movie and listening to Mr. Ratner and his producer's commentary really enforced my belief in making movies with passion. The passion expressed by Mr. Ratner and the producer was so heart-felt, it gives me hope for greater things to come from them.

To me the realness of this movie is in its ending. Mr. Cage, after his blissful 'glimpse' of what could have been, tried to track down Miss Leoni in real life, who is a successful attorney also on a fast track, to give the love they once shared one more try (did I spoil the movie by revealing this?). Like what the filmmakers said in the making-of documentary, Mr. Cage only asked Miss Leoni for a cup of coffee and they left the audience there imagining the possible outcomes. They, as filmmakers, did not try to turn this story into a fairy tale. Today's movie goers are sophisticated enough to know when a story is manipulative or not. :)

It may be too late for Mr. Cage and Miss Leoni's characters to develop a life together like in Mr. Cage's glimpse. But it's never too late for us viewers to take stock of our life and determine what really matters.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What a cute movie
Review: It was nice seeing a 'cute' movie that didn't have MEG RYAN in it. It's possible to make a family film with out it.
The adaptation of the Scrooge into this modern film was well done. Even those who don't know the classic were left satisfied with the moral of the tail...Be Kind.
I enjoyed the ended very much, I don't think it ended corny or anything, whose to say the angle hadn't visited Kate to keep her from THROWING out his box of memories after 13 years...like anyone else would have done.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Disappointing to the extreme
Review: I was looking forward to this as a male version of "Me, Myself, I". It falls so far short. The point is forced and the characters are dry and one dementional. I felt sick at the end of the movie, it wasn't uplifting or inspiring like "Me, Myself, I".

The only part I liked through the 126 min movie was at the end when he realizes he's going home to an empty apartment building while the others are going home to their families.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Gag me with a 'feel good' spoon!
Review: The Family Man can best be described as a 'feel good' movie. It is designed to give an audience the warm fuzzies. I suppose there is nothing wrong with being made to feel fuzzy, but, in order to be put into such a state, a person needs to be sentimental. Since I very rarely feel sentimental, the movie did not work for me at all; however, I can see how it could work for a lot of people.

Jack [Nicholas Cage] is a hugely successful New York stock broker. His apartment is grand, his suits are quite expensive, he drives a Ferrari, and he has his pick of women. When he was in college, he was madly in love with Kate [Tea Leoni]. When the movie opens, we see the couple at an airport. Jack is flying to London to study for a year. Kate tearfully begs him to stay, fearing his leaving will end their relationship. Naturally, it does, and we next see Jack twelve years later, still single and so driven that he is working late on Christmas Eve in order to cement a giant corporate merger. That night he comes to the aid of the seemingly homeless Cash [Don Cheadle], who turns out to be some sort of spirit guide. The next morning, Jack wakes up to find he has been transported to some sort of alternate universe. Now he is, in fact, married to Kate. They live in New Jersey and have several of those adorable, almost maintenance-free kids you see only in the movies. He's not a stock broker in this life. He sells tires for his father-in-law. Kate hasn't become the high-powered attorney she intended to be, but rather one who defends the poor. Jack spends the rest of the movie frantically trying to get his old life back. Eventually, he learns that happiness requires a loving family. Apparently, it also requires one to live in New Jersey and to sell tires.

Only in Hollywood, where the people who make these movies are themselves often rich and single or divorced, could such a tale be conceived. It is aimed at ordinary people, who Hollywood assumes think ordinary is where it's at. The oddest thing about The Family Man is that Jack, other than being stuck with working on Christmas Eve, doesn't seem at all deprived. He not only thrives on his hectic life, he appears to love it. It's true that the life he discovers in that alternate universe is charming and fulfilling in an entirely different way, but we all make choices in life that prevent us from knowing what our lives might have been. Jack finds out that he's unknowingly been unhappy all these years, but only because the script says so. It's as though the people who made the movie couldn't bring themselves to scoff too much at their own lifestyles, which more closely resemble wealthy, successful Jack's.

Cage, Leoni and Cheadle get through their roles effortlessly. Each is used to acting in headier stuff, and this movie is a piece of cake for them. It's also a piece of cake for us, one which will seem much too artificially sweet to some viewers.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very good romantic comedy
Review: I am not really a major fan of either Cage or Leoni, but both have really shined this time.
Jack Campbell is a successful Wall Street executive who has it all. Or so he thinks. He gets a glimpse of what his life would have been like if he had decided to stay with his girlfriend rather than pursue his career. The film is full of unexpected events and the story line is highly original and thus is quite captivating.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Wonderful Film!
Review: "The Family Man" is about Jack Cambell, a buisness man who enjoys his life style and claims to have "no regrets". But when he receives information of his former love, Kate Reynolds, old feelings arise and the question "Do you have everything you want?" can not truely be answered. After performing a good deed, Cash (played by Don Cheadle), gives Jack a glimpse of what life could have been, had he made the choice of starting a family with his true love Kate Reynolds.

Waking up next to Kate Reynolds and having kids scream "Daddy, Daddy!", Jack panicks, finding himself in the New Jersey suburbs, playing the role of a husband and father. The film takes off into numerous comedic situations, in a journey to find out who this "family man" really is. As time goes by, Jack (Nicolas Cage) becomes accustomed to this new life and finds himself falling in love with Kate (Tea Leoni) all over again, eventually becoming "The Family Man".

The chemistry that Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni have is magical, making the film all the more believable and enjoyable. Tea Leoni is perfect as Kate Cambell and gives the most convincing and most memorable performance of her entire career. With many memorable scenes (such as the "chocolate cake" scene and the "Kate's Birthday" sequence) the film is one of the best I have ever seen. It's heart-warming, hypnotic, and (at times) comedic. And although the film comes to a somewhat bleek conclusion, it ends the film realistically, not giving us the "Hollywood" type ending you might expect.

I own the DVD and encourage you to do so as well, so you can relive the magic, the laughs, and the tears that make "The Family Man" an outstanding picture. This film will cause you to really think of the decisions you make and will have you wondering, "What if..."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A "Must See" Movie!
Review: Nicholas Cage is at his best in this heart-warming movie. His acting is truly unique, and he's outstanding playing this part. You can't beat the acting by each and every one in this movie. My favorite of all time. Try not to get all weepy-eyed - it will melt your heart!


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