Pieces of April (2003) User Reviews

Took Me By Surprise

[evanston_dad · 8/10 · 23 November 2005]

This film blew me out of the water. I was expecting an amiable, slight comedy, serving more than anything else as a launching pad for Katie Holmes's career into the Hollywood big time. But instead, this movie is a substantive and very moving story about a young girl who desperately wants to make a nice Thanksgiving dinner for a family from whom she feels somewhat estranged. It's extremely warm but extremely sad, and left me with a huge lump in my throat.

Katie Holmes is winning and sweet as April, and whether or not you like Holmes, I bet you'll be rooting for her by the film's end. For one day, her whole world becomes about planning one successful dinner party, and her lack of skill forces her to fall back on the kindness of neighbors she's never taken the time to meet. Meanwhile, her family (mother, father, brother and snotty sister) are on their way into the city to April's apartment, whining and complaining about having to visit a crummy part of town and missing no opportunity to criticize April, while trying to ignore the white elephant in the room, the fact that their mom has cancer and may not live to see another holiday. Of course, the conversations they have with each other communicate heaps of back story and clue us in to the family dynamic, and we learn that April's biggest critic, her mom, also happens to be the most like her daughter.

Patricia Clarkson has become one of my favorite actresses, and her Academy Award nomination for her performance as the mom in this film was richly deserved (I think she should have won). She beautifully plays this role with just the right amount of sarcasm and wit to prevent the movie from ever getting bogged down in sentimentality. When she finally is reunited with April at the very end, what could have been an icky, maudlin ending instead knocked the wind out of me with its simplicity and honest emotion.

"Pieces of April" just feels like one of those movies that is based on actual events in the life of its writer or director. It's full of tiny details of behavior that make the characters feel completely authentic, rather than creations. And there's a total understanding on everybody's part of the dynamics at play in a family that doesn't always get along and of that tendency of families facing some sort of crisis to latch on to one thing that's pretty mundane in order to avoid dealing with something else that is too big for the individual family members to deal with on its own.

Grade: A

One of the best Thanksgiving movies ever

[cricketbat · 8/10 · 3 January 2020]

Not too dark. Not too sappy. Not too indie. Not too normal. In other words, this film was just right.

Slightly Bizarre, and Very Sweet

[Darguz · 7/10 · 7 January 2005]

"Once there was this one day where everybody seemed to know they needed each other. This one day when they knew for certain that they couldn't do it alone." (April, trying to explain the origins of Thanksgiving.) That ultimately is what this movie is about -- people needing people, and the inter-relationships of people. It's about April and her family, but it's also about April and Bobby, the Lee family, Eugene and Evette, and even Wayne, who needs somebody, but misses connecting once again. Jim needs Joy, Bobby needs Latrell, Joy needs her family, she and Timmy need the bikers, and it just goes on and on. We all need one another and touch one another, and those touches spread out and out. Beautiful.

I also loved all the little twists, such as the stiff, middle-aged mother chiding her teenage son about properly rolling a joint; and the puncturing of stereotypes and prejudices. When Bobby's waiting by the phone for Latrell, it's probably tempting to think he's doing a drug deal or some other unsavory activity. But I knew better; I was laughing well before it was revealed what they were up to. Magnificent.

Another one to add to the video library, and I'm going to have to check out more Peter Hedges (though I have seen Gilbert Grape).

funny and moving little film

[Buddy-51 · 11 April 2004]

Written and directed by Peter Hedges, `Pieces of April' is a droll little comedy with deadly serious overtones. April is the black sheep of the Burns family, the one child of whom her mother has no fond memories. Although from what we see of her, April seems to be a pretty decent young lady, it is obvious that her parents and her brother and sister harbor deep resentments towards her (her earlier involvement with drugs and drug dealers seems to be the primary cause of bitterness). Well, it's Thanksgiving Day and April is attempting to mend some bridges by hosting this year's dinner at her cramped New York City apartment. April is terrified of failure and her family members have little faith that she will be able to pull the event off. Complicating matters even further is the fact that Joy, April's mother, is suffering from terminal cancer.

As a narrative, the film basically runs along two parallel tracks. One involves April and her frantic attempts to get her dinner cooked despite the fact that her gas oven has suddenly stopped working. This forces her to go up and down the hallway of her apartment building throwing herself on the mercy of her colorfully eccentric neighbors, some of whom offer their assistance and some of whom don't. Hedges mines his richest vein of humor in this section, capturing the offbeat nature of both the people and the situation. The other plotline - involving the family's reluctant trek from suburbia into the city - naturally carries with it far more serious overtones, dealing as it does with death, recrimination, family dysfunction and despair. But even here, Hedges is able to inject some moments of wicked black humor into the proceedings.

Oddly enough, of all the characters, April is one of the least fully developed in the film. She remains basically a passive observer and most of what we learn about her comes from comments made by various family members. We have to take it on faith that she is such a loser and a troublemaker because we see very little evidence of it with out own eyes. Certainly the most intriguing character in the story is the ironically named Joy, ironic because, even though her terminally ill status should elicit sympathy from the audience, her often-nasty disposition makes it difficult for us to like her. This is Hedges' boldest touch, this refusal to sugarcoat or sentimentalize a person just because life and the fates have been unkind to her. Also quite fascinating is the character of Beth, April's younger sister. We see how Beth thrives on the positive attention she receives simply by being the `good' daughter of the family, and how she jealously and ever-so-sweetly guards her own position while subtly sabotaging any effort on the part of April to make amends and to find her way back into the fold. It's a fascinating portrayal of sibling rivalry carried to destructive proportions.

`Pieces of April' features wonderful performances by Katie Holmes as April, Oliver Platt as her father, Alison Pill as her sister, and Derek Luke (from `Antwone Fisher') as her boyfriend. Particular praise should go to Lillias White, as the neighbor who supplies April with a stove at her greatest hour of need, and to Patricia Clarkson as Joy, who achieves the Herculean task of making her pain-wracked character both abrasive and sympathetic at the same time. It's an award-worthy performance.

Pieces of April Without A Really Dysfunctional Family ***

[edwagreen · 7/10 · 6 November 2010]

The ending of the film which shows the true meaning of Thanksgiving made the whole effort worthwhile.

As the dying mother, Patricia Clarkson deserved an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. No doubt about that. Her mood swings, her nostalgic look at the past and present, and her memories of a totally out of control oldest daughter were just memorable.

That daughter gave plenty of trouble to a rather well-constructed family. The other children seem to have it all on the ball. Even Clarkson's mother, a victim of dementia, seems to be with it at certain times.

This is also quite comic with some of the tenants shown in that apartment building. How they come together in the end and form a cohesive unit was a joy to see.

My major fault with the film was that it was just too short.

Outstanding

[stills-6 · 9/10 · 16 January 2005]

From the initial scene of the ordeal of getting April up in the morning to the final shots, this was one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. And it's enjoyable on many different levels -- it's funny, charming, weird, intelligent, and it has a real honest heart to it that isn't nearly sentimental or gushing. The psychological depth of this movie is astounding; and the characters, though there are many of them, are well realized. It is very clear that this film was made with a lot of care and compassion. With the possible exception of Wayne (overdone by a miscast Sean Hayes, reminiscent of the cringe-inducing Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's), you felt real emotion from every character. Katie Holmes is great as the disaffected daughter and Patricia Clarkson is just fantastic in a very complicated role. Well made and well acted. Highly recommended.

Simmering charm

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 25 May 2014]

April Burns (Katie Holmes) and her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) are cooking Thanksgiving dinner for her family in her rundown NYC apartment. She discovers their stove doesn't work and she tries desperately to find a working stove. April's mom Joy (Patricia Clarkson) is sick. Her sister Beth (Alison Pill) is annoyingly smothering and doesn't want Thanksgiving at April's. Her brother Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.) got her mother weed. Her father Jim (Oliver Platt) tries hard to keep everybody happy. And Grandma Dottie (Alice Drummond) is losing her memories. April finds help from her neighbors Evette (Lillias White), Eugene (Isiah Whitlock Jr) and weird Wayne (Sean Hayes).

This is a small indie from Peter Hedges. The production is strictly low budget hand-held camera work. Katie Holmes isn't stretching too far and does a good job. The family is led by the great Patricia Clarkson. There is a bit of low simmering charm about this. Every once in awhile, it lands a hilarious punch. It doesn't always hit solidly, but it usually leaves you smiling.

The best Thanksgiving movie ever

[zetes · 10/10 · 3 April 2004]

Thanksgiving has always meant a lot to me. Unlike the stereotypical depiction of the holiday from movies, I always found it to be, beyond any other day of the year, the day when my family is the closest. Differences and resentments fade for a day, possibly because we're Midwesterners of German descent and there's nothing we like more than food. Whatever the reason, it's a pleasant holiday for me. Pieces of April captures the way I feel about Thanksgiving perfectly, and it moved me as deeply as any movie I can think of. It has a few flaws, a few things that could have been changed for the better, but its overall effect made me overjoyed and emotionally crushed at the same time. Patricia Clarkson was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as a mother of three dying of breast cancer. She's not a very nice person, and she's not too pleased with the way her life has come out. Katie Holmes plays April, Clarkson's eldest daughter. She lives in a crummy apartment in NYC and has invited her family to Thanksgiving dinner, most likely to be her mother's last. Unfortunately, Holmes finds that her oven doesn't work. She desperately searches the other apartments in her building for someone who isn't using their oven. A third track follows April's black boyfriend who rides his motorized scooter around the city for reasons that are at first obscure. It's a comedy, and a very, very funny one at that, but the themes of family and past injuries are remarkably touching. Clarkson is amazing, and she is the most obviously impressive performer in the film. However, Katie Holmes really proves herself to be one of the best actresses of her generation; her role is much more subtle and complex than Clarkson's. Oliver Platt plays April's father, and he also gives a subtle performance as the person trying to unite the family before his wife is gone. The only thing that really bothered me was the character of Wayne (played by Sean Hayes), one of the apartment dwellers whom April asks for help. He agrees to help her, but he thinks that she owes him something big, i.e., sex. That's surely believable, but the character is played as a goofy, eccentric cartoon character. It's far below the standard of the rest of the film. It reminds me a lot of Mickey Rooney's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's, an underthought splotch on what is otherwise a masterpiece. I wonder if it will have anywhere near as powerful an effect on others as it did on me (I wept for nearly a half an hour, and occasionally sobbed for almost an hour after that), but I am certainly more than willing to stick up for a movie like this that I really believe in. 10/10.

A tale that somehow endears itself to the viewer

[MeloDee · 7/10 · 17 November 2010]

The premise of the movie is a simple one and basically summarizes the whole movie, "A wayward daughter invites her dying mother and the rest of her estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving dinner."

The movie starts us off on that Thanksgiving morning. First, we are introduced to April, and her boyfriend Bobby who are living together in a shanty apartment in New York, and then to April's mother, father, and brothers and sisters in another location, who are preparing to make the trip to visit her. We aren't provided with any back story, except what we gather about the past from conversations that April's mother has with the rest of the family during their voyage.

Honestly, I was finding myself slightly bored during the beginning of the movie. The film, although over an hour, manages to span over just one day, lending it a slow feel. The cinematography was somewhat unimpressive. The soundtrack is sparse, with most scenes not having any music at all, and the music that is present is humming just outside the viewer's awareness most of the time rather than being the main focus in any one scene.

I found myself easily able to make prejudgments about each of the main characters based on their limited dialogues and their reactions to things going on around them. I stereotyped Beth as the movie's prim and proper "good younger daughter". She gave unsolicited advice with surprising frequency, and always seemed to try to distinguish herself as being the opposite of the "wild child" elder sister that she obviously secretly envied, if not admired. Timmy played an easygoing middle-child, cleverly juggling his role of responsibility as the one only other "man of the house" with the conflicting role of unimportance being in the middle tends to lend to a person. Bobby was the soft-hearted but firm father. You could almost feel his tension when you looked at him, empathize with his struggles to hold his family together, knowing that he would someday have to do it all alone.

Finally, we come to April's mother, Joy. Whether Joy is an ironic name for her or not, I will leave for you viewers to decide. She comes across as jaded and sarcastic, with a sly sense of humor and a stubborn streak. Most of all though, she seems tired, the toll from her illness clear on her; the toll from her strained relationship with April, clearer still.

Then of course, there's April herself. She's fierce, independent, and loyal. It isn't hard to see why she could've gotten into trouble in the past, but it also isn't difficult to see how she probably got out of it.

This movie definitely has its funny moments, mostly stemming from the encounters with the characters that Apirl meets as she struggles to pull together her Thanksgiving dinner. Her family also has some adventures during their trip, starting (almost) with picking up April's partially senile grandmother from the nursing home.

Despite its simplicity- or maybe because of it- this film will tug at your heartstrings in a way that you don't expect. At least, it certainly did mine, partially because I could personally identify with having a strained relationship with my own mother, even if it was just for a time. I found myself close to tears during some moments, which is rare.

I think the message of the movie is, that love has power, that family is still family even when some of you don't fit in, some of you don't like each other too much, and some of you try too hard to be perfect, ultimately failing. Most fail, however, when they don't try at all. It all sounds trite and very cliché, but this film somehow delivers itself in a way that makes the message both memorable and believable. The cast had to carry so much and each member carried his/her share with significant grace.

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody- hopefully this movie will help you to remember what the season is supposed to be about.

Very Delightful Thanksgiving Tale

[claudio_carvalho · 9/10 · 18 May 2005]

In a very poor zone of New York, April Burns (Katie Holmes) and her boyfriend, the Afro-American Bobby (Derek Luke), are preparing to receive April's family for a thanksgiving dinner. While Bobby tries to borrow a suit for him, April realizes that her stove is broken and she tries desperately to find a neighbor that can let her cook the turkey, since she does not want to fail (again) with her family. Meanwhile, in a suburb of Pennsylvania, her dysfunctional family is preparing to travel to New York. While driving in the road, the relationship between the Burns and the black-sheep April is disclosed through the conversations between her father Jim (Oliver Platt), her resented mother Joy (Patricia Clarkson), her brother, her sister and her grandmother.

"Pieces of April" is an enjoyable and very delightful thanksgiving tale. This low budget movie has a very simple story, being sometimes a mean dramatic comedy of errors, but touching deep in the heart of the viewer. The cast is very inspired, highlighting the performances of Katie Holmes and Patricia Clarkson. The parallel way the story is disclosed is magnificent, developing clearly each character, and showing their feelings and resentments. I did not like the character of April's neighbor Wayne (Sean Hayes), since it is not clear if he is a weird or just a stupid man. "Pieces of April" is a gem to be discovered by sensitive viewers. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Do Jeito Que Ela É" ("In the Way She Is")

Sometimes feels like a PARODY of an Indie film, but still works.

[gargantuaboy · 7/10 · 29 October 2020]

April is kind of a screw up in life and she is trying to put together a thanksgiving dinner in her dreadfully sad little apartment for her family she has not seen for quite some time. Her mother has cancer and is not doing well and is played nicely by Patricia Clarkson who got an Oscar nomination for supporting actress for the part. You get the idea pretty quick that April has never had much of a relationship with her mother. Her entire family along with perky sister and awkward brother pile into the family car and take a long road trip for Thanksgiving at April's apartment. Families in quirky indie films are always piling into cars and taking road trips. This is right out of the "How to make a quirky indie film" instructional book.

April is played by Katie Holmes and she does a nice job here. Watching Holmes play this screw up of a girl trying her best to roast a turkey is a fine premise. As the family makes their way on the road to come to dinner, April's oven stops working and most of the story is then watching April go from neighbor to neighbor begging to use their oven. I like that idea, and while Holmes character does feel real most of the time, are we really supposed to believe she is such a buffoon in the kitchen she has no idea how to make mashed potatoes? We literally get shots of her trying to smash the hard uncooked potatoes in a bowl.

The movie frequently cuts to the family on the road, and one particular scene shows the family accidentally hitting a squirrel or something and they actually get out of the car and have a funeral for the little thing and the son awkwardly makes a speech as the entire family, along with Granny, stand around the newly dug grave. The whole scene feels like it came out of another chapter in the "How to make a quirky Indie film" instructional book. Not a second of it is believable. You half expect them to pull out signs that say "WE ARE A QUIRKY INDIE FILM FAMILY AND THIS SCENE SHOULD GET US AN INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD!!"

The movie then cuts back to April running around her apartment building with her raw turkey trying to find an oven. She is helped by several neighbors including an African American family who want April to set her set her goals higher by NOT using canned cranberry sauce. A nice Chinese family also help her out, one neighbor that does not come off so well is Wayne, who she is told just got a new state of the art oven and Wayne is played by Sean Hayes doing a really bad job at playing a rich snobby character as he shows off the futuristic features of his brand new oven. First you are thinking why would this rather snobby fellow live in this decaying old building? and second you are wondering why he is pushing this forced character with this put on voice, so much?

Finally we see the family get to the building and they are so shocked from seeing how rundown it looks they drive off to a restaurant and while they are sitting there ordering, the mother starts to feel a touch guilty for snubbing her daughter on Thanksgiving so she walks off to speak to some biker who is sitting at the bar, the very next shot is the mother on the back of the motorcycle putting on a helmet which felt like it was pulled right out of yet another chapter in the "How to make a quirky Indie film" instructional book. The biker drives the mother to April's apartment and soon the rest of the family join her and some of the quirky characters from the building come in for Thanksgiving dinner as well, thank god Sean Hayes does not make an appearance doing that badly forced character he probably learned in some improv class sometime in the 80s.

Another annoying thing is through out the entire movie Katie Holmes wears a tank top that looks like she just ran into a kid who just walked out of 31 Flavors with a dozen ice cream cones. If you see the movie you will get the idea.

The movie is entertaining enough and makes for a pleasant viewing.

Great!!!!

[frankita-madden · 10/10 · 21 January 2007]

I loved this movie basically because is what sometimes I felt about my family or friends. Sometimes you make a great thing for one of them and they don't even care about that amazing thing you made especially for them. I could see myself as April, trying to be super nice and caring with them, until her mum realizes about how much she still loved April and how much damage she and the entire family is making by the fact of not appearing at the dinner.

Also the camera effects are involving and amazing. The environment created by the director and the actors makes you go deeper into the film and really see or watch what's happening in the story. I really gets you in the places, the story, the entire film. Great job, and excellent performances.

Nice little film

[rbverhoef · 7/10 · 29 January 2005]

'Pieces of April' is a nice little thanksgiving film that ends before it is over, but by doing that it makes sure the film has exactly the length it should have. Eighty minutes that is. If I explain my first remark I might spoil things. About the second: The film shows three little stories that take place on the same time for about five hours or so. The length this feature film has makes sure none of them becomes boring although near the end we start thinking that it might.

The first story shows April (Katie Holmes) who lives with her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke), a nice black guy. They get up early and start preparing a thanksgiving dinner, apparently for April's family she has not seen in a long time. Bobby has to leave and do something which provides the second story, which is a single story but handled in a few scenes. In the first story April's oven stops working so she hopes on nice people in her building.

The third story, the second main story, shows April's family. We meet her father Jim (Oliver Burns), her mother Joy (Patricia Clarkson) who is dying of cancer, grandma Dottie (Alice Drummond) who is not totally healthy anymore, her brother Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.) and sister Beth (Alison Pill). The only one who sort of wants to see his daughter is Jim. His dying mother wants to go the least of all, we learn from her dry humor. They do not wish to see April because her past is not very spotless.

This film works because it is genuinely funny and warm. We can guess where the story will go, but supporting characters in April's building and especially Joy and grandma with their remarks give us some surprises. Most of those surprises bring a great deal of humor with them. Although it is fun we sort of get the feeling it has to end soon or it will become boring. The funny moments become more of the same and meeting more different people would turn April's building into a soap opera set. Fortunately it does end exactly when we start to feel this way, but it is so sudden it gives us the feeling of an unfinished film. Since it has, at least story-wise, the right ending that does not really matter but I do think there were other, better, possibilities there.

The Emperor Has No Clothes! (spoilers)

[jcwla · 1/10 · 31 January 2004]

This is the most ridiculously overpraised piece of crap of the year. First of all, it's only about seventy minutes long without credits -- not that I was complaining by the end -- which is pretty insulting in the era of $10 movie tickets. Second, the camerawork makes Woody Allen's "Husband and Wives" feel positively stable by comparison. It's truly headache-inducing.

There's a lot to hate about this movie, but most of all is that it takes place entirely in Movieland, where every character has one or more supposedly endearing or interesting eccentricities and ten times too much dialogue -- all of it screaming "SCRIPT!" --, every moment is laden with unlikely action and silly melodrama, and nothing anybody says or does bears any resemblance to the real world.

The baby-faced Katie Holmes as a druggie is only the beginning. Next comes the black woman whose initial response to Holmes at her apartment door rings completely false. Then the effete upstairs neighbor who behaves unlike anybody on Planet Earth. And the list goes on and on and on -- it's really amazing how much falsehood has been crammed into so little running time.

The stuff with April's family is just painful to watch and rings false from the first second to the last. Patricia Clarkson gets the one and only laugh in the picture when she has her husband stop the car, gets out, and without saying a word crosses the highway and sticks out her thumb to hitchhike in the opposite direction. The idea that this is an award-worthy performance is an insult, not least of all to Clarkson. Everybody else, you just feel sad for, including yourself.

I recommend the film for its true contribution to the American version of 'kitchen-sink' realism.

[JohnDeSando · 27 October 2003]

My family Thanksgiving dinner is latent with chaos, a breath away from murder, on the edge of total misunderstanding. But we survive it and return another year because we don't know any better, or amnesia sets in, or these are the only people who will feast with us. Tim Hedges catches my family and others I am sure in 'Pieces of April,' a comedy in which Goth girl April and her black boyfriend invite her family from Jersey to their Manhattan apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.

Mom, played by the current middle-age rage, Patricia Clarkson ('Station Agent'), is dying from cancer, which allows her on the tumultuous ride with hubby and two other children to indulge in sardonic observations about her daughter's inability to do anything right, much less pull off a dinner, to comments about her lovers, including long-suffering dad (Oliver Platt), who patiently waits in horror for his wife to die.

Katie Holmes' April flies to almost every other apartment to find a working stove, but what she finds is a menagerie of tenants, most of whom like her don't know their way around a dinner, much less Thanksgiving. As she figures out how to cut an onion or carry a turkey, each one of us can remember the first time we learned those tricks, often when the family could enjoy the humiliation.

The HD filming adds a home-movie touch to the proceedings, which are all predictable because we have all been there. I recommend the film for its true contribution to the American version of 'kitchen-sink' realism and its evocation of thankfulness in all of us that our Thanksgivings were never this disastrous, just by a hair though!

That was me!

[sharky_55 · 7/10 · 20 May 2018]

Pieces of April is a neat little indie film from the early 2000s about a dysfunctional family brought together by the occurrence of Thanksgiving and a spot of life-ending cancer. April Burns is the estranged daughter who sends out the invitations for what could be their final holiday dinner together, and to throw an extra spice into the mix, it's also the first meeting with her mysterious boyfriend (he's black, but a slight upgrade on her previous drug-dealing partner. Go figure.). But director Peter Hedges arranges the structure of the movie so that these stories are all separate strands, and when they converge in the end, all past grievances have been aired and resolved. It is the journey there that tells the story; the reunion is just a formality.

A young Katie Holmes plays the titular role, and looks the part (although she would be a complete anachronism today): heavy gothic eyeliner, dyed pigtails, a choker and an abundance of irreverence. But beneath that surface brews anxiety, and Holmes frets frequently and appropriately. Just look at her fall to pieces when stumbling across a pair of salt and pepper shakers along with the childhood trauma that accompanies them. She enables the grief to be visible. Her mother by comparison gets the meatier, Oscar-worthy opportunities, able to undercut her nastiness with biting humour. It's Patricia Clarkson's sheer dismissiveness of the situation that makes her such a potent personality; it's her last Thanksgiving, and she's getting as many late shots in as she can. The natural rhythms of the overlapping dialogue in and out of the car assist this aura of toxicity, riffing off each other, then cutting in during the middle of a sentence, bouncing punchlines off egos. Their timing is impeccable, like a comedy troupe in perfect sync. See how Alison Pill splutters a protest when her big-headed brother tries to snap a candid photo of her picking at her teeth, and then as Clarkson cuts in with a sarcasm comment. You can't buy that type of authenticity.

Stylistically, Hedges makes the best of his shoestring budget, replacing conventional lighting and camera setups with a handheld grittiness, as if the viewer was a distant cousin awkwardly observing this family reunion like a fly on the wall. It's no Cassavetes, but it works well in stripping away the glamour of their fragmented lives, peering up and around the dinghy corners of April's apartment block. Livolsi cuts with scrappy relish, in one particular occasion overlaying April and Bobby's sweet pillow talk (about the lavish meal they are preparing) with the bickering and chaos of the rest of the Burns family making their way into the city. It's all grainy and the outdoor shots are overexposed, but those have never got in the way of a good story.

April's quest to cook her damn turkey doubles as an expansion of her mindset and tolerance, sharing stories and cooking tips with black neighbours and overflowing with gratitude at the Chinese family who lend her the use of their oven, although they don't speak a lick of English. This is all pretty conventional stuff, and although it may be eye-opening for April, it's not exactly groundbreaking or transgressive. Even when Bobby is fretting over making a good impression on his white girlfriend's family, the subtext is mostly text. When he bumps into April's drug-dealing ex, instead of highlighting the irony of how race still is the overpowering stigma, it just becomes a bad comedy sketch. It all ends in a wordless montage set to gentle music and touching snippets of the reconciliation dinner, which is perhaps more than the Burns deserve. See Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married for a similar story that doesn't pull its punches.

I agree, best Thanksgiving movie ever

[marianp1 · 10/10 · 13 March 2005]

I am so glad that I decided to plonk down a couple of dollars and see this movie on Pay for Play the other night. I wasn't sure what to expect, and I had one of the nicest movie surprises I had in a long time.

April is a the black sheep of her family, but as Rita Mae Brown wrote in one of her better novels to describe a character, has golden hooves. She's gone off from the hills of, what is filmed anyway, in upstate New York to lower Manhattan. But she's no That Girl. Her previous boyfriend was a drug dealer, and her current fellow, gets his clothing at less than wholesale prices.

She has a mixed bag dysfunctional family, the star of which is the kind of little sister you wish you had sent out to play in traffic when you had a chance, that she is trying to reconnect with. April is too good for this bunch, as she tries to prepare the all American Thanksgiving dinner in her own special way for this undeserving bunch.

It is so touching to see her, finally succeeding (maybe) in her quest for a stove making favors, and decorating the stairway, all 4-5 floors with autumn colored streamers, etc.

I just wanted to hug her!

A Thanksgiving meal that tries to sustain us.

[RangerBob · 7/10 · 11 June 2006]

Really well done Indie. The story is just what the Thanksgiving meal is supposed to be. There's supposed to be some substance; as with anything we ingest, it's supposed to feed and sustain us. There's a nice flavor to this movie... - a little sweetness and some hints of spice, but overall it's satisfying. It's meant to be shared. If there was a family member you needed to build a bridge to, this film might be a good "anonymous" DVD gift that arrives on their doorstep sometime. Oliver Platt as the father actually fills the role of the middle child in a family, trying to get everyone to kiss and make nice. That's the message in almost every holiday movie - for people to try and make up to heal some family hurt before we find it's too late. This film holds that sentiment well. Katie Holmes may be trying to heft too much in this first attempt to carry a film, but this performance mirrors the character that she plays in that she's really working hard to produce something that could be memorable. I really liked this film and I will recall it as Katie's real attempt to be more in the industry than she ended up as, which is of course, as Mrs. Tom Cruise.

Beauty amidst Brokenness

[youngman44 · 9/10 · 26 November 2015]

Out of deep brokenness, dysfunctionality, sadness and despair comes a moment of true peace and joy.

This is truly a fantastic film. Significantly underrated yet beautiful.

The acting is superb on all counts. Without a doubt in my mind it is Katie Holmes best role. These are the kinds of roles to which she'd do well to seek to return.

But, the other roles were also exceptional. Those who have seen Newsroom will recognize two of the actors as the younger siblings in this film - Allison Pill and John Gallagher, Jr. Their current acting skills are clearly recognized and on display.

And the roles played by the consistently sound Oliver Platt and the underrated but very talented Patricia Clarkson are superb.

My wife and I have watched this every Thanksgiving since 2006. It remains the best Thanksgiving movie ever made, in our view.

Punk Rock Joey Make a Turkey

[matthewssilverhammer · 7/10 · 4 December 2017]

Often after watching either a disaster or a masterpiece, I'm left sort of speechless, but rarely am I left that way for something this qualitatively "OK". It's melodramatic, cloying and falsely complex, yet also comfortingly human, quietly funny and the way it absorbed my mind, it clearly had some sort of unquantifiable impact on me that makes it worth recommending.

Moving, funny, sad, and intensely human

[danceability · 10/10 · 30 October 2009]

Moving, funny, sad, and intensely human

About thirty minutes into this film, I must confess that I didn't think I was going to like it, but I ended up liking it a great deal. The first problem I had was the look of the film, with an exceptionally grainy cast to the images, made worse by a series of extreme close ups, and bleached out colors. The film never ended up looking good, but the it bothered me less as it went on. The second thing that bothered me was that the set up seemed a bit too stereotypical: black sheep of the family April living in squalor in another town (New York City) makes a Thanksgiving dinner for her disapproving family (loving but sometimes overwhelmed father, younger and negativistic sister, go-with-the-flow younger brother, grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's, and hypercritical, cold, and unloving mother, who is undergoing--probably futility--chemotherapy for breast cancer). Of course, everything starts going wrong and gets worse (April and her boyfriend obviously have no culinary skills, oven is broken and she has extreme difficulty finding anyone who can help her, her mother in the car bringing her family to NYC is constantly berating April and creating a poisoned atmosphere, etc.), and I felt the whole thing was a bit too predictable (which it in part remained). But at some point about halfway through the film, I really started enjoying the film. Sure, it still looked bad, but I started enjoying getting to know the characters, I began to find the humor more and more biting, and I started to want her family to be pleasantly surprised at April's almost heroic efforts to create perhaps the last good day they would all have as a family. I was also enjoying some of the quirky neighbors we meet, including a very helpful middle-aged African American couple living below her, and a bizarre upstairs neighbor with a nice, new stove (played by Sean Hayes of WILL AND GRACE). Things both at April's apartment, with her boyfriend (who unhappily runs into her drug dealer ex-boyfriend just before the dinner starts), and inside the car get worse and worse until everything apparently collapses. And then, perhaps a bit too neatly, everything is put back together again. But just like the characters in the film, we in the end want everything to be nice and pleasant, and it isn't at all hard acceding to that inclination.

I liked the cast a great deal. Oliver Platt (he and NOT Will Ferrell should be starring in A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES!) is as excellent as always, and Patricia Clarkson is outstanding as April's dying and acerbic mother. She is especially funny in the scene where she smokes dope (to counteract the effects of the chemo) and seems to rewind to her youth in the car. Katie Holmes is made to be as unlovely as it is possible to make her, but she still possesses enough wounded charm to make us root for her making her dinner a success. Indeed, her ongoing struggles both against fate and against her own culinary ineptness renders her as quite the heroine by the end of the film.

This film isn't for everyone. It is a bit bleak, and it isn't the prettiest film in the world to look at, and fans of DAWSON'S CREEK might want to see a prettier Katie Holmes, but if one can get past all this, one just might discover that this is a funny, inspiring, and moving film.

Ties that bind.

[dy158 · 7/10 · 23 July 2006]

April (Katie Holmes) is preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for her family who are coming over to visit her. Though Joy (Patricia Clarkson) and her daughter April were never on good terms all the time, Joy knows she has to meet her daughter.

We are being shown later to what happened while April is trying to prepare the Thanksgiving dinner and whatever's going on with her family on the road. There may be hiccups along the way, but then everything works out well in the end.

It may be a little slow at times for me while watching, but then I have to say Katie Holmes playing such a teenage rebel of sorts, is quite a change.

All the pieces fit together quite beautifully

[thomvic · 9/10 · 12 September 2010]

To be quite simple - the story is simple, but heartwarming and really makes you care about the characters from start to finish. April (played terrifically by Katie Holmes) is hosting a thanksgiving dinner which will most likely be the last one she will hold with her Mother and family due to her Mother's terminal cancer. They are driving to New York to see April while at the same time dreading the experience that will either distance April even more from her family or finally make some peace.

Katie Holmes gives a really good performance as the rebel girl who is trying to make some new changes in her life. What this story does is simply tell a story that we could all relate to on one of these special occasions - whether it be Christmas or a birthday. The fact that this is a low budget film with the quality of the film being reasonable, though not spectacular actually adds to the whole feel of it - it makes it more real.

What is also great is the supporting cast and characters who come into the whole drama. The black family who lives in the apartment block end up helping April when her oven breaks and the food preparation actually had me wanting to go buy a turkey and have a great feast. Most of all, Patricia Clarkson's performance is splendid and with all the great performances, you keep caring till the very end and rooting for the family to get together and to come to an understanding.

It's movies like these - which are so overlooked, which really should get more attention. Sometimes something simple can end up being one of the best movies you can see.

A sentimental film about family relations.

[ville_koistinen · 7/10 · 24 March 2005]

The first thing you notice about this film is that it has well-known actors: Katie Holmes as the family's black sheep, Patricia Clarkson as the sick mother, Oliver Jones as the tender father and Sean Hayes as the weird neighbour. But unlike other low budget movies with stars (for example Four Rooms), this actually works really well.

This movie is about a family, the Burns'. April isn't in good terms with the rest of the family so she invites all of them for supper at Thanksgiving Day. The middle section of the film gives hints about what has driven the family to the current situation while the rest of the family is driving towards New York where April lives. And at the same time April is having trouble with cooking.

I really liked Hedges' directing and the acting seemed very natural and those two made this movie really intense. A good movie, worth watching.

It's easier to exist peacefully with strangers, because they don't come with the baggage of a 'family'...

[Howlin Wolf · 5/10 · 22 March 2005]

"Pieces of April" is a neat little way of exploring the hypothesis in my summary. It does this very effectively in both the opening and closing; first nicely establishing the community that April has to rely on when her estranged family are due to re-enter her life abruptly; and then in an accomplished sidestep that makes the imagined awkwardness more dissolute, come the end. By having the family turn up individually, they are almost WELCOMED as strangers, and therefore possess less of the proprietary influence that relatives can so often exert. It's a clever little tautology that superbly bookends an intimate 'slice of life' piece, because it shows us how family is as much an idea as it is a construct.

Unfortunately, given the refreshing examination of such themes; the midway appearance of Sean Hayes into this movie marked the start of a downward spiral that, for my money, the film never fully recovers from. I find him amusing enough on "Will & Grace"; but here, his traits were made awkwardly and deliberately extreme, to try and make some of the others appear normal, in comparison! As such, he became less of a character, and more of a quirky sideshow; destroying much of the intimacy that the setup had earlier taken advantage of, to maximum effect...

I was reminded just what a delicate presupposition film often relies on; when one misjudgement in the midsection overbalances the solid groundwork made in a situation and its resolution. Is the audience just expected to overlook that? Sorry, but I couldn't...