Cheap The Family Man (DVD) (Nicolas Cage, Téa Leoni) (Brett Ratner) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Family Man

Brillantly protrays the richness of family live
The director does an great job emerging the audience into the character live of Jack Campbell
played by Nicholas Cage. The movie is like a surreal dream where some one you love is not a part of your life, but you get a chance to see what life could have been. The dramatic tension postures Jack Campbell with a girlfriend thirteen year eariler whom in his dream marries. Every day life in suburan America requires Campbell to change diapers, transport school age children, bowl with the company league, and work at a tire dealership. Simple pleasures in life make the movie harm warming, such as, Jack's anniversery amensia, his new green suite, and snow fight with his children. Dreams can only remain a dream with Jack. The message become clear that he has the knowledge to change his immediate "Ground Hog" reality, as he discovers his daughter realizes that he is not their father. Jack manages hitch up with his form boss, pitch him, and return back into big money and the luxories associated with money, such as, expensive dinners at well known restraunts, gorgeously decorated penthouse with fine furnature and art, elborate apparel and clothing, and respect drawn by fear. Life is too perfect and Jack must return to reality which he doesn't want, after discovering the love of a family. The magic is over. This version of Scrouge was so much more than the critics conceded to and deserves more recognition as a great family film. Nicholas Cage and Téa Leoni bring a "down to earth" feeling of the richness of family live, the importance of small rituals, the intimacy of friends, the pains of daily work, and the warmth and comfort of a cozy home. Yet most of us long for the "Good life": expensive materialistic homes, servants to care for every whim, peer prestige and recognition, and ruthless power to control destiny. I found the movie to balance the contrast and provide unique humor and warmth in the film.

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Surprisingly good despite the obvious premise
Let's see - it Christmas Eve and Jack, a ruthless high powered executive with a superficially luxurious lifestyle, has just informed his staff that that they're going to have to work on Christmas rather spend time with their families. What could possibly happen next? In movie world, there's only one answer. A mysterious character will appear to give Jack a "glimpse" of the life he would be leading if he hadn't chosen to be such a self-obsessed jerk. Voila - Jack awakens Christmas morning in a simple New Jersey home filled with a loving wife and two children. Come to find out that instead of taking the wonderful job in London that launched his brilliant career, he stayed home, accidentally impregnated his college sweetheart and ended up as a salesman in his father-in-law's tire dealership. So far, so predictable. From here on out, the movie only improves. Thankfully, there are few cutesy scenes about Jack's domestic ineptitude. Instead, the director wisely focuses on the strong relationship between Nichola Cage and Tea Leoni. I'm not giving anything away here by saying that Jack comes to appreciate parts of his "new" life. It's a pleasant enough journey for the viewer, but what's remarkable is the fresh new ending. If you like your movies to be sappy sweet it won't appeal, but it provides a nice twist of ambiguity to an otherwise routine story.

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A Really Engrossing Film
This movie borrows from It's a Wonderful Life and the book Replay, where a man can go back and see how his life would be if he made a different choice.

In this movie, Nicholas Cage says goodbye to his girlfriend (Kate) at the airport. He is going to London for a job. We next see him years later as a successful head of a large corporation, unmarried and basically involved in one-night stands. We are later to find out that when Cage went to London, he forgot about Kate and she went her own way, never to be heard from again.

Cage is on the way home from the office during a snow-storm and thwarts a robbery. The audience expects the robber to shoot cage but instead Cage seems to convince the robber that he would be a better man if he didn't shoot Cage. It turns out that the robber is not really a robber but a type of Angel (similar to Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life) who will give Cage a glimpse of what life would be like if he hadn't stayed in London but instead came back and married Kate.

Cage goes to sleep in his luxury apartment and wakes up the next morning in a bed with an older Kate. Cage slowly learns that he is really a married man with a family and instead of a big time corporate president, he is a tire salesman in his father-in-law's store.

There are several hilarious scenes and some very touching ones. His "new" life looks like a nightmare at first turns out to be the life he will eventually prefer (Some of this is reminiscent of Goldie Hawn in Overboard). Only until he realizes this, he will not be returned to his prior life by the Angel.

The director does a great job in giving us an ending that is different than what you seem to expect. I won't say what but I think it was well done.

One thing that is not explored is that when Cage's glimpsed life finishes, he will lose his two children from that glimpsed life. The director never touches on Cage's feelings about that, unlike the novel Replay where the main character is torn apart because a child he had in an alternate life no longer exists when he is in a different reality.

The movie is well cast and Don Cheadle is excellent as the "angel."