Cady's Take:

Their two teenage kids, Timmy (John Gallagher, Jr.) and Beth (Alison Pill) dread the prospect of having to drive to the city to spend Thanksgiving with the black sheep of the family. Beth is extremely jealous of April and is afflicted with an extreme case of perfect daughter syndrome. She tries every way she can to sabotage the trip. Also along for the trip is Grandma Dottie (Alice Drummond) who has a hard time remembering her own family.

By the way, April doesn't know how to cook. She finds out at the last second that her oven doesn't work, probably because she has never used it before. Her live-in boyfriend, Bobby (Derek Luke) is missing. The clock is ticking… April desperately goes from room to room in her apartment building, trying to borrow the use of someone's stove so she can cook the turkey.

Holmes is magnificent. She again proves her versatility and creates a character that parallels many real women in today’s world. The movie evokes dozens of memories of your first stab at making it on your own. This is a great film by writer-director Peter Hedges who also made “About a Boy” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”. If you’re in the mood for an offbeat comedy with a splash of drama, this is a good pick.

I was not expecting “Pieces of April” to be quite so funny, nor to be quite so touching however at the end I felt I had watched a very sweet movie that accurately portrays family dynamics. Even if your total experience is not analogous to the Burns’, watching this movie I cannot imagine that anyone would be unable to relate to at least one of the characters.

April Burns (Katie Holmes) is the oldest of three children, a girl who clearly rebelled and became the black sheep, moving into the city and away from her family ties. Her mother Joy (Clarkson) is dying of breast cancer and April invites her parents, siblings and grandmother to spend Thanksgiving at her apartment with her and her new boyfriend Bobby, played by Derek Luke, a soft-spoken black man who inspires April to try and reconnect with her past. We learn a little about Joy as April explains that one Thanksgiving her mother told her to put down the turkey shaped salt and pepper shakers, saying “They are worth more than you are.” After this story, April’s tattoos and piercings begin to make some sense. We learn a little about April from Joy, as she explains to the family that she has one beautiful memory of April, and then we learn that it is actually a memory of her other daughter Beth who yearns to be the perfect daughter, and who is driven mad by April’s mere existence on the planet.

Oliver Platt plays Jim Burns, a father who loves his family and his older daughter and has hope for reconciliation before the inevitable death of his wife. Patricia Clarkson’s Joy is distinctly joyless; her dread of seeing April matched only by her sarcasm regarding the meal they are about to enjoy(?). Platt and Clarkson are believable, and Clarkson especially leads us to the question of what this woman was like before the cancer. Was she always this hard on everyone around her? And although she inspires sympathy, if April’s recollections are accurate, Joy was probably never Mother of the Year.

This is a movie about letting go of your expectations and embracing people for who they are, right then when they are in front of you.