Home for the Holidays

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Summary: YES! Please Re-release this Movie!
Review: I, also have been searching for a copy of this. My family and I love to watch it during the Holidays, unfortunately it doesn't look like any stations in our area will be airing it...does anyone know where a copy might be for sale?

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Summary: A modern holiday classic.
Review: An accurate movie of what Thanksgiving is like for a "dysfunctional" family. A lot of interesting messages regarding dealing with the mysteries of life. Excellent soundtrack, which features Pittsburgh's Rusted Root covering Evil Ways.

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Summary: Mildly amusing, but too scattered
Review: A coworker recommended this, so I rented it for the Thanksgiving weekend. I was sorely disappointed. All the actors did a good job, however the underlying story just seemed too scattered to me. Very unfocused. The writer, director, whoever should have picked ONE angle and stayed with it. It would have been hilarious if it was just all the family's dysfunctional stuff. It would have been romantic if it was a love story between Claudia and Leo. It would have been sweet if it was the family putting aside the bad times and remembering the good times and rediscovering each other. Instead, we get ALL of this and, in my opinion, it was just a jumbled confused mixed stew. I'm sorry I wasted my $2.50 at Blockbuster on this un-funny hodgepodge.

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Summary: PLEASE re-release this video!
Review: I've seen this movie several times, and have been unable to purchase it anywhere. It's a wonderful movie - so true to "the holidays".

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Summary: the best thanksgiving movie ever!
Review: Okay, so "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" is one of the awesomest movies out there. This one still gets me more. Jodie Foster did a brilliant job. I laughed so much, and cared a lot for these characters, and it just seems like what would happen over a Thanksgiving get-together. I will always love this film. Every actor is great, and Holly Hunter carries it perfectly. One of the best comedies ever, and one of the most heart-felt films I've ever seen.

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Summary: miracle on 34th street of the 90's
Review: This movie has become an all time favorite of our whole extended family. I have a brother who's favorite movie is miracle on 34th street and I just recently found out that this one is a really close second. I enjoy the raw humor of Robert Downey Jr. and this is the only movie that I actually like Holly Hunter in. We can't forget Dylan McDermott, Charles Durning, and the wonderfully neurotic Anne Bancroft.

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Summary: It's a Holiday Tradition
Review: We watch this movie every Thanksgiving to get us in the mood for family and turkey and holiday hysteria! Both funny and heartwarming, a family favorite.

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Summary: Home for the Holidays has more than a few good moments
Review: Its only fair to say up front that "Home For the Holidays" is the kind of movie not everybody will understand or enjoy, especially those with good well adjusted lives. However, for we huddled masses, this film is like a smiling little angle in some newly restored Renaissance masterpiece as director Jodie Foster paints with brilliant flare a portrait of a typical middle-class family at Thanksgiving. That is...a typical less than functional...American family. We, who are products of such, know what's meant by that, and appreciate the true beauty of this work is that it lets you recall the pain and joy that only families can give.

At first glance Home For The Holidays is a good-old-fashioned comedy about the reality of family values and holiday reunions. It follows the return of Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter), a 30-something never been married single-mom eldest daughter professional with a exotic career, to the childhood home for the much-dreaded November 25th holiday feast. In the course of one short not-so-good day she loses her glamorous job, self-respect, and expensive fabulously beautiful coat. As she prepares to board the plane her 15-year-old daughter, Kit (Clare Danes), informs her in a passing after thought..."I'm going to have sex with Tim, safely, and not in the car, have a nice Thanksgiving." Now, the terrified-of-flying Clyde endures the always-bumpy mind-numbing siege of a Fall flight from Chicago to Baltimore siting next to the somebody's mom passenger-from-hell. She is primmed, prelimed, and primed for a close encounter of the parental kind.

Adele, (Anne Bancroft), is an all knowing neurotic chain-smoking..."why are you squandering your god given talents"...kind of well meaning mom with a more than slightly unsound but flatulent sister, Aunt Glady (Geraldine Chaplin). She was a Latin teacher! Henry Larson, the dad (Charles During) , a recently retired BWI (Baltimore/Washington International) flight mechanic, spouts profound non sequiturs and drives both the car and wife a little more crazy by the minute. Like a slowly drowning pouch in the bottomless pool of parentally concern the diminutive Clyde's shrinks ever younger with deafened eyes glazed just over the rim of a10 year-old three-sizes-too-big spare bright red parka. Of course mom and dad play their hydrous game of catch-up. When, from the back seat mom leans over and whispers..."I can see your roots Claudia"...and you're greeted at the door by Frank the cat coughing up a hairball, you know your really home.

To Clyde's unbemused delight Tommy (Robert Downey), the favorite baby brother makes a surprise night-vision goggle raid that culminates in ballroom kitchen dancing and a late snack. They all know Tommy sports many hats as a successful Boston restaurateur, manic wisecracking prankster, Polaroid popping paparazzi, and a mans-man. But now he has a relationship secret that Clyde will pry out if it kills him. She thinks something awful has happen between Tommy and his significant other, Jack (Sam Slovick). She also resents, no questions her brother's new guy pal in-tow, specialty cook Leo Fish's (Dylan McDarmatt), incessant sucking up. That is, until it finally dawns that he's not gay and has been hitting on her. Tommy told Leo about big bad sister's earlier fragile in fight cry for help and showed him Clyde's picture. Hey, that picture, was something else...but was she naked...was she what...in the picture, Tommy showed him, was she naked? The most difficult piece of this eccentric jigsawed quilt is the wonderfully awful Witmans freshly flushed from their curbside bunker. This passel of possum players is headed-up by the up-tight, resentfully compulsive, younger sister turned care taker, Joann (Cynthia Stevenson), followed in suit by husband banker Walter (Steven Guttenborg), brat niece Brittany Lace (Emily Ann Lloyd), and ingrate nephew, Walter Jr (Zack Duhame).

So, to the melody of Nat "King" Cole's "The Very Though of You" this quirky cast lends the film the unforgettable rhythm of a tap dancer on a run-away roller coaster. Despite the many ups, downs, twists, and turns it doesn't miss a beat. At the end of the day, after the birds are et, all is said and done in the wake of the show and tell, and the last dish been washed and put away, this lovely little comedy has a very small but special message. Although it maybe lasts for 10 seconds, tops...the really important things in life are those brief, seemingly insignificant, sometimes tender, and often bittersweet incidents we experience when we're with family. We always remember and cherish...the moments...and Home for the Holidays has more than a few good moments.

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Summary: Hysterical holiday movie
Review: This movie shows how messed up a family can be and makes you laugh at your own family. I was on the floor, dieing of laughter, but that may just be because my family resembles the one in the movie so much.

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Summary: Incredulous
Review: This film, undoubtedly, takes me back. To times when I, as Holly has demonstrated, would "roll my eyes" of the thought of confronting my family. I continue to find humor, after having seen this film mutliple times, in the candor exhibited in this film. Great Job and Kudos to Jodie Foster for such exeptional perception of the lives of us "mid-class American folks" trying to make the best of many bad, yet, hilarious situations. I have indeed been there and done that!! Happy Thankgiving 1998...........Trix