Pieces Of April (12A)
Running time: 79 mins April (Katie Holmes) is trying to explain Thanksgiving to a neighbouring Chinese family. 'It's the day when you realise you can't do it alone,' she finally says. Pieces Of April illustrates the discomforts of dependence: no one here can do it alone, and they're all shifting around in their mutual reliance as if in an itchy T-shirt.
Joy (Patricia Clarkson), April's unloving mother, has been sharpened to a vicious point by breast cancer; her husband (Oliver Platt) is a podgy peacekeeper, sublimating his grief to deal with Joy's anger.
Their other children are a smarmy do-gooder and a camera-obsessive; these four in a car with senile Grandma, heading to the city for a Thanksgiving dinner none of them wants to attend, makes for jagged comedy. Meanwhile, April's struggling to cook for the first time, her vaunted independence severely compromised by a broken oven.
Screenwriter Peter Hedges's first film as writerdirector is an accomplished tragi-comedy that avoids sappy conclusions, and cinematographer Tami Reiker helps keep the film's surface free of sentimental fluff with digital video that deliberately enhances the ugliness of April's run-down New York neighbourhood.
There are longueurs, and Holmes still seems too Dawson's Creek for her role as reforming rebel, but Clarkson is wonderful: her chemo-induced nausea more than matched by the verbal bile she spouts at her cowering family.
Little Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star was adored in the 1970s for his gap-toothed grin and grating TV catchphrase 'this is nucking nuts'. Strangely, this did not translate into life-long success, and now thirtysomething Dickie (David Spade) is parking cars in LA and dreaming of a comeback. When Rob Reiner says he'll never be an actor because he missed out on a normal childhood (hmmm), Dickie pays a suburban family to foster him. Thence onwards we trip down the well-worn path: family values traded for a few tips on how to stand up to bullies, etc. Cameos from ex-Lost Boy Corey Feldman and Barry Williams (Brady Bunch) remind us of the poignancy of ex-child stars - and none of it is in this lacklustre mock-doc. There's the odd sweet moment, and Spade is surprisingly likeable, but otherwise it is, as little Dickie might say, just the usual cucking frap.
Pieces Of April
Cert: cert12A
