REVIEW:
A creative take on a Christmas Carol, this Nicolas Cage romantic comedy tells the story of a wealthy bachelor who wakes up one morning in an alternate reality where he has a wife and kids. In that sense it’s a little bit like the Sliding Doors, parallel reality kind of situation. This guy goes on to spend the movie trying to navigate through this “new” life, which includes dealing with neighbors and friends, and not letting on that he’s really a different person basically impersonating someone else, and trying not to get caught.
The idea of a successful bachelor learning about the pros of a family life in the suburbs, working as a tire salesman, turn out to be kind of fun. And seeing the way this movie only vaguely goes near the trademarks of A Christmas Carol is also interesting. For example, Don Cheadle plays a sort of ghost who appears three times (in some respects representing the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.) But this movie also isn’t held to the staples dnd trademarks of that classic story. In other words, none of the three times he appears is Cheadle playing any one of those specific ghosts. Instead, the whole movie is like a dip into the Christmas alternative-present kind of situation.
The movie definitely hits some cliche beats from time to time. It’s a family movie, after all, directed by Brett Ratner, who was not exactly known for taking risks. But this was probably his best movie (other than Rush Hour 2,) and certainly the one that is most memorable. It doesn’t have a ton to do with Christmas, but just enough to make it count as a Christmas movie, and certainly an entertaining one at that. And a large part of the reasons it’s so rewatchable have to do with the supporting cast. From Tea Leoni to Cheadle to Jeremy Piven, these were the stars of the nineties, hitting their stride, not as the leads, but in the smaller roles that they knew how to handle. There’s no doubt, for example, that with Piven, this was the kind of role he did best (he played a similar best friend / neighbor character in Grosse Point Blank, another one of his better roles.)
The movie is far from spectacular, but when you look at Christmas movies, there are so many that are just good enough, (Vince Vaughn has two of them all to his own with Four Christmases and Fred Claus.) The Family Man definitely fits that bill. It’s creative and fun, and doesn’t need to be the smartest movie out there to be a success. This one works as a sort of B level guilty pleasure Christmas movie, and sometimes that’s all that you need.