Pieces of April (2003)

“Once, there was this day… this one day when… everyone realized they needed each other. ” – April

Number of Times Seen – 1 (16 Jul 2018)

Brief Synopsis – A young woman and her boyfriend try to make the perfect Thanksgiving dinner for her visiting family, but nothing seems to go according to plan.

My Take on it – This is a film that I never heard of beforehand and decided to watch it based solely on the fact that Patricia Clarkson was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role here.

I can understand why she would be nominated but her character isn’t as much of a standout.

The story doesn’t work very well and that largely has to do with the fact that they don’t manage to develop the characters enough for us to care about what will happen to any of them.

The cast is actually quite talented yet since they are lacking much to work with, they aren’t able to take this story to any higher level.

The story itself is quite unbalanced and eventhough there are some interesting scenes, they are outweighed by the fact that most of the scenes are quite lackluster and don’t manage to tell us anything really interesting.

Bottom Line – Interesting idea that just doesn’t work very well since they do little to develop the characters enough that we should care about what will happen to them.  This movie is filled with some great actors but since they aren’t given much to work with, they aren’t able to take this film to higher levels.  The story feels quite unbalanced and despite having some interesting scenes, they are outweighed by the scenes that feel quite lackluster in what they are trying to tell us.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – One of the inspirations for the movie came from a story Peter Hedges had heard about a group of young adults who had “borrowed” an apartment so they could celebrate their first Thanksgiving in Manhattan together. The oven in the apartment did not work so they had to go door to door in the building, trying to find an oven in which to cook their turkey. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)

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