For the holidays or any other time of the year there's no place like Jodie Foster's
deliciously warm-hearted and well-observed comedy. Slyly inverting Tolstoy's famed dictum
about happy and unhappy families, director Foster and her deft ensemble show us that on the
last Thursday of every November, all unhappy families ARE alike. First they carve up the
turkey; then they carve up each other. This particular brood includes a forty-ish single
mom (Holly Hunter), her parents (Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning); her prankish brother
(Robert Downey, Jr.); his mysterious "friend" (Dylan McDermott); Cynthia Stevenson and
Steve Guttenberg as Hunter's boringly uptight sister and brother-in-law; and Geraldine
Chaplin as her dotty aunt who wears a necklace made out of Froot Loops. What the movie
captures so well is the loving ludicrousness of forced family togetherness disguised as
some hearty holiday ritual. And it reminds us that there's no one like your own flesh and
blood to knock the stuffing out of you...and still, somehow, have you coming back for
seconds. Here's one family reunion you won't want to miss.
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