Sep 10th 2004 02:32 pm Pieces of a clunky metaphor
I must confess that Pieces of April was not everything I expected and more, but that is only because I keep expecting Katie Holmes to make a good movie. So, really, it is my Own Damn Fault™. Spoilers follow, if it matters so long after its release.
This movie was full of miscalculations. A spent metaphor and two-dimensional characters do not an interesting movie make (write that down). Neither does the recitation of a Thanksgiving recipe while sleeping with your stock-interracial-boyfriend (point: no sleeping is involved when sleeping with someone. Discuss misleading euphemisms). Using Thanksgiving as a metaphor to demonstrate that people need one other is hardly "new" (whatever that means) or even particularly engaging. The most damning misstep was the writer’s belief that we would care about this family because—what? their mother is dying of breast cancer, and that’s why she’s evil until she has her random change of heart after her father’s unforeshadowed capitulation to the whims of his (also evil) daughter? When actually people tend to sympathize more with three-dimensional characters whose motivations we can relate to? Oh, okay, that’s what I thought. And the attempt to give April’s boyfriend some depth by playing him off as the gangsta-who-isn’t ("I gotta go do that sketchily ambiguous thing, then I’ll be back") and getting him beat up (but only a little) by April’s ex’s friends is lame. Introducing April’s ex specifically to beat up her boyfriend is even more lame.
In retrospect, though, I was hasty in my initial judgment that there is nothing of particular value in this film, and that is the only reason this post exists, points above notwithstanding. Though the central metaphor is banal and the characters both underdeveloped and underutilized, in the background is a well-painted portrait of the oft-overlooked actual meaning of Thanksgiving: what a profound difference a day can make in even our most apparently deep-rooted and fundamental attitudes.