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Review: Pieces of April (***)



 
 
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Old October 3rd 03, 02:43 AM
Steve Rhodes
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Default Review: Pieces of April (***)

PIECES OF APRIL
A film review by Steve Rhodes

Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****): ***


Where, oh where, could mommy be? In Peter Hedges's bright and original
PIECES OF APRIL, the mother in the family can't be found because she's
already in the car in the garage waiting silently for the rest of the
members of the household to get dressed. Joy, the ironically named mother
of the Burns family, is played to the sarcastic hilt by Patricia Clarkson.
Currently dying of breast cancer, the terminally unhappy Joy is a bitter
woman who loves nothing better than absolutely tormenting her family with
deathbed humor.



The movie follows two parallel story lines. In one, Joy, her husband Jim
(Oliver Platt), their older teenage son (John Gallagher Jr.) and daughter
(Alison Pill) and a senile grandmother (Alice Drummond) are off in the
family's old station wagon. Their long car trip, full of recriminations and
cynical stories, is to the seedy apartment of April (Katie Holmes), their
oldest child. Joy and Jim struggle to remember a single positive moment in
their upbringing of April. The best that they can come up with is a time
when April was little and Jim recalls how peaceful she was sleeping. Once a
hellacious child, the grown-up April has mended her ways, Jim claims,
without much conviction. She has given up on her old drug dealer boyfriend
and is turning her life around.



Meanwhile in April's shabby apartment in a ghetto area of an unnamed inner
city, she and her new boyfriend, Bobby (Derek Luke), are attempting to
prepare a Thanksgiving meal for April's family. The "feast" to be is just
the opposite of a LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE meal. They drop the turkey on
the dirty floor and then wash it in the equally filthy sink. To stuff it,
they stick in whole celery stalks, which they trim with scissors. Most of
this part of the story is focused on a hunt for an alternative oven, since
April's oven, which she has never used, proves not to work. She ends up
meeting all of the generally unfriendly and unsupportive folks who live in
the other apartments in her rundown building.



The best of the subplots involves Latrell (Sisqo) and Evette (Lillias
White), a pair of old gourmet cooks who give lots of advice and help to poor
April. When they learn that her family actually likes cranberry sauce
straight from a can, they are aghast and teach her how to prepare it
properly from fresh ingredients. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I
should admit that my wife and son are fans of the canned variety.)



Will the rest of the Burns family ever get to April's apartment, or will
they turn around as Joy keeps urging? Will April ever find an available
oven to cook the bird? And will Joy and April ever reconcile their
seemingly insurmountable differences? I'm not saying, and it doesn't matter
anyway. In PIECES OF APRIL, the journey is indeed the reward.



PIECES OF APRIL runs 1:21. It is rated PG-13 for "language, sensuality,
drug content and images of nudity" and would be acceptable for kids around
12 and up.



The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, October 24, 2003.
In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the Camera Cinemas.



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