With a Thanksgiving Day theme you would expect the regular Holiday crap where well-to-do families get together and they meet the newest girlfriend, boyfriend, fiance etc. That isn't the case with Pieces of April. Here you get the New York City ghetto, gang beatings, a road trip with a family more sickening than the Bundys and and a turkey that just can't find a home.
Without giving away too much of the storyline. April is the black sheep of a family just slightly less dysfunctional than the Bundys of "Married With Children" fame. April lives in a tiny run down New York City apartiment and her middle class family is coming to her place for Thanksgiving dinner on a road trip in a K-Car.
For those of you who don't remember the K-Car. They were Chrysler's cheap little cars and wagons that sold like hot cakes in the eighties but rarely lasted more than a few years. The Barenaked Ladies sang about them.
During the road trip the Mother who is dying of cancer makes frequent stops to smoke weed to deal with nausea and puke. She is wickedly mean but that can be forgiven considering her medical condition. The oh so perfect sister sings opera and also makes you want to puke as she cuts up April at every opportunity
Back in the ghetto at April's place the stove won't work and she must cook Thanksgiving dinner by borrowing the ovens of the other interesting tenants who live in her tenemant. This marathon of knocking on doors, pleading with strange tenants and nice tenants and explaining her problem is priceless, especially the scene with the Asian family.
The movie earns four golden Butterball Turkeys out of five for the warm fuzzies it leaves you with.
While I have left you hanging about most of the movie I should tell you we rented the movie once and bought it in a bargain bin soon after. We watch it every Thanksgiving (Canadian and US) and sometimes at Christmas. That should tell you how meaningul the movie was for us.
I wonder if Holmes remembers making the movie which only cost $100,000 to make in 2003 and for which she was paid $248 a day to shoot. Her lifestyle with Tom Cruise is better but this movie shouldn't be forgotten.
