Pieces of April: Movie, DVD Review

Written and directed by Peter Hedges, 80 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2003)

Peter Hedges’ "Pieces of April" is set during Thanksgiving, a time when Hollywood’s most dysfunctional families tend to come together to carve the turkey and, you expect, each other’s throats.

That’s just the case in "April," a slight, quirky film filled with just enough familial woes to make it interesting even though it occasionally falls short of expectations.

The movie scores for one good reason--Patricia Clarkson’s sharp, Academy Award-nominated performance as Joy Burns, the beleaguered mother of three fighting the last stages of cancer. Joy is losing the battle, but what she hasn’t lost is her sense of humor or her biting wit, which are exactly what keep "Pieces of April" together even when it threatens to fall apart.

In the movie, Joy agrees to embark on a road trip with her husband, Jim (Oliver Platt), son Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.), daughter Beth (Alison Pill), and failing mother, Dottie (Alice Drummond), so they can be in Manhattan with eldest daughter, April (Katie Holmes), for Thanksgiving dinner.

The problem is that nobody here especially likes April (Katie Holmes), a tattooed mess who lives in an East Side slum with her boyfriend, Bobby (Derek Luke), and who has long been the family disappointment.

From Hedges’ own script, the movie overcomes the undercurrent of death tugging at its periphery thanks to Clarkson’s Joy, whose prickly observations keep the laughs coming and the sap at bay. Too many ancillary sidetrips pull you out of the core story. Still, those moments are tolerably brief, and the film’s climatic moments, caught in snapshot repose, are indelible, with a lasting power that comes from all that’s not said as this damaged family tentatively reconnects.

Grade: B