The Family Man Synopsis: A fast-lane investment broker, offered the opportunity to see how the other half lives, wakes up to find that his sports car and girlfriend have become a mini-van and wife.
Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) has it all. A cushy job, a penthouse apartment (with a doorman!), expensive suits, and beautiful women ready to warm his bed. The one thing he doesn’t have is a family, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. Work is his priority, which becomes quite evident as he keeps his staff working late on Christmas Eve and then plans to have them come in for a strategy meeting on Christmas Day to nail down an extremely profitable merger.
As his staff runs off home to their families, Jack opts to walk back to his apartment and stops in a small convenience store to buy some egg nog. This leads to a chance encounter with a man named Cash – or is he an angel? – looking to cash in his winning lotto ticket. Their conversation concludes with Jack insisting he needs nothing in life as he has everything he wants. Cash tells Jack that he brought what is about to happen upon himself.
The next morning, Jack wakes up in an unfamiliar bed in a strange home in New Jersey. An unfamiliar child is jumping on the bed excited for Christmas morning, but the woman he wakes up with is a familiar face – Kate (Tea Leoni), his college girlfriend who had planned on marrying before leaving her for a year-long internship in London.
Jack panics, rightly so, and flees back to New York, where no one who should know him has any clue who he is. Cash shows up to explain to Jack that he’s been given a “glimpse” into what his life would have been like had he not left Kate at the airport that fateful day. The glimpse will end… well, when it’s meant to. So Jack needs to buck up and do his best.
The Family Man is very much in the same vein as It’s a Wonderful Life, except where George Bailey got to experience what the world would have been like had he never been born, Jack Campbell gets to discover how differently his life could have been had he chosen love over money. Whereas George is frightened and appalled at the state of Bedford Falls without his influence, Jack is shocked at dirty diapers, a house in Jersey, and working for his father-in-law’s tire store. It takes a while, but once Jack can look past his superficial desires, he begins to truly appreciate how fulfilling his life is with Kate and their children.
I’ve never been a huge Nic Cage fan, but he gives an excellent performance here as Jack. He plays Jack’s transition from greedy and cynical to open and loving with ease and has impressive comedic timing. Tea Leoni truly shines as Kate. She’s headstrong and so charming that you can’t understand how Jack could have left her standing in that airport at the movie’s beginning. It helps that Leoni and Cage also have fantastic chemistry, playing a couple that is clearly still in love even after thirteen years of marriage and two kids.
The Family Man’s supporting cast, especially Don Cheadle, who plays Cash, is just as good. Unfortunately, some of the supporting characters disappear halfway through the film – Evelyn (Lisa Thornhill) wants to have an affair with Jack, but after asking him to come over that weekend while her husband is out of town, she is never heard from again. The same goes for Jeremy Piven, who plays Jack’s best friend in Jersey. Those particular storylines are never wrapped up.
Are there some formulaic plot points within the The Family Man ? Yes. Typical Christmas themes of family being a greater gift than money? Absolutely. But they are all executed so well that I didn’t even mind. I just loved the premise – who hasn’t wondered “what if” before? and I found the movie to be romantic and heartwarming, with just the right amount of humor. The Family Man is such an uplifting movie with a not-so-predictable ending that I genuinely believe this is an underrated holiday film.
Watched: 11/27/2019
Notable Song: ‘La, La, La Means I Love You’ by The Delfonics
