Holiday Thoughts ‘13—The Family Man (2000) ***

PG-13, 125 min.

Director: Brett Ratner

Writers: David Diamond, David Weissman

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Téa Leoni, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Piven, Saul Rubinek, Joseph Sommer, Makenzie Vega, Jake Milkovich, Ryan Milkovich, Lisa Thornhill, Harve Presnell, Mary Beth Hurt, Amber Valletta, Francine York, Ruth Williamson

I’m pretty sure I’ve written this before, but like many, I wasn’t thrilled with “The Family Man” the first time I saw it. It was kind of a let down. It wasn’t as funny as I’d hoped. It wasn’t as happy as I’d expected. I think that’s because it never lets its main character off the hook.

It’s kind of a modern day “It’s a Wonderful Life” meets “A Christmas Carol”. Nicolas Cage plays a highly successful president of a big business that specializes in mergers and acquisitions. He celebrates his own avarice with zeal. He relishes the life he materialistic life he leads. He’s not broken and run down by the lack of substance in his life. His life is the substance that he created for himself.

However, long ago he let the love of his life go. One Christmas Eve, his good heart and a potentially dangerous situation lands him the chance to see what his life might’ve been like had he chosen a different path when he let his love go. He wakes up and suddenly he’s a suburban house dad. He works for his father-in-law selling tires retail. He has two kids and a beautiful wife, who acts as a pro-bono lawyer. He struggles to make his mortgage, and he drives a minivan.

What works is what might’ve seemed didn’t at first. Nothing fits. He doesn’t just get it like that. He’s not suddenly the perfect dad and husband. He doesn’t just screw up a little. He screws up big time because he has no compass in this territory. It takes a long time for him to get the hang of things and just when he does it’s taken away from him again. I think that’s what really bothered audiences at the time of the film’s release. He didn’t get to have the happy ending everybody wanted for him. He didn’t get to keep his family.

The filmmaker’s choice to make him start all over again at the end of the movie is a brave choice, and it’s the right one. It doesn’t cheat the circumstances or the character. He earns the right to have that life of real substance, but he doesn’t just magically get it. He has to build it, because such a life is meaningless unless you’ve put the work into it. Losing all those elements that we’ve come to love about his life, like his kids, his friends, his family, and the security of an experienced relationship is hard on the audience and the character, but it gets the point across much stronger. Such a life isn’t magic, even if it seems to be from others’ points of view. The fact that there are people who can build such a life together is the true miracle at work here. I’m happy to say, I see my life as such.