Some Decent Pieces of April

Through the marvels of Netflix I have been catching up on some smaller movies that I meant to see but never got around to while they were in the theaters. "The Triplets of Belleville" is one, which I highly recommend even if you aren't a cartoon fan. Another was "Pieces of April" starring Katie Holmes of Dawson's Creek fame. Thankfully, her character in the movie was miles away from Joey Potter.

The story is the typical Thanksgiving-family-disaster, with the family coming over and the dinner not yet prepared. April and her family have the epitome of the love/hate relationship, sans most of the love. But her mother is dying of cancer and she wants to make Thanksgiving dinner for the year that may be her mother's last. There are the usual cooking hijinks, since April has never cooked before. When she discovers her stove doesn't work, it leads her on a search for a neighbor's oven, leading to amusing and sometimes touching results.

The majority of the movie is told in two parts: the April cooking part and the family on their way, but not really wanting to go part. This division allows for us to make up our minds about the characters since they spend little time being explosively reactive to each other. Patricia Clarkson as the mother and Oliver Platt as the father were particularly good. And the two other children were very lighthanded in their portrayals of kids who are at the breaking point regarding their mother's illness. Joey Potter does a nice job as a young woman secretly desperate for her family's approval, but trying to protect herself against their inevitable scorn.

This wasn't a brilliant movie or even a great one. But it was a good watch and gave me a warm fuzzy feeling at the end.