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Pieces of April (2003)

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167 comments in total

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32 out of 39 people found the following comment useful :-
Outstanding, 16 January 2005

Author: stills-6 from california

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.

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26 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
The best Thanksgiving movie ever, 3 April 2004

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

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.

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20 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
funny and moving little film, 11 April 2004
Author: Roland E. Zwick (magneteach@aol.com) from United States

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.

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14 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
8/10, 22 May 2004

Author: desperateliving from Canada

I'm not sure why I found this as wonderfully exceptional as I did since most reviews have been just pleasant, but maybe it had to do with a sweet spot in my heart about second chances, people making mistakes, and bad first impressions centered on one Turkey Day. (The film feels like a sentimental, independent version of a Thanksgiving Day movie in the sense that "A Christmas Story" was for that holiday.) The movie also satisfies a movie fetish of mine about films that take place at least partially within a car. Patricia Clarkson's performance as a dying mother is so sophisticated that the simplistic digital video visual style is completely forgiven. Katie Holmes is worth watching in another one of her string of fine films; Oliver Platt, as her husband, is merely present. I couldn't decide whether Sean Hayes, a quirky next door neighbor of Holmes', was jarringly bad or just really odd. 8/10

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15 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Very Delightful Thanksgiving Tale, 18 May 2005

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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")

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17 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
I recommend the film for its true contribution to the American version of 'kitchen-sink' realism., 27 October 2003
Author: John DeSando (jdesando@columbus.rr.com) from Columbus, Ohio

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!

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15 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Slightly Bizarre, and Very Sweet, 7 January 2005

Author: Darguz from Battle Creek, MI

"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).

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Took Me By Surprise, 23 November 2005

Author: brocksilvey from United States

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

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11 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
I agree, best Thanksgiving movie ever, 13 March 2005

Author: Marian Paroo from Tel Aviv

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!

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7 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Gourmet dining, 16 November 2003

Author: jotix100 from New York

Heaven help anyone invited to eat at Chez April. The girl doesn't even know how to peel a potato! Beware to those that come to her small Manhattan apartment: Bring your own digestive remedies for after the incredible meal she will serve her guests...

Peter Hedges is a very good writer whose novels I have read with a great deal of pleasure. We have to thank him in his directorial debut, but please don't stop writing fiction. This film is a feast because of the vivid characters Mr. Hedges has created. Mr. Hedges has accomplished something very important with this film in casting actors that fade into the people they portray on the screen.

April's family is somehow dysfunctional. She has moved away from home in order to do the same things that were not allowed in the middle class suburb where she grew up. Thanksgiving seems to be the perfect time to make amends with the family and show what she has accomplished on her own.

Well, the family is in for a big surprise indeed!

Katie Holmes is an interesting actress to watch. She melts herself into this April, who cannot get a dinner together for all the money in the world, even though she has the best intentions. Patricia Clarkson, as Joy, again shows how she can get inside this mother who has a short time to live. Also, Oliver Platt, as the father is very good.

I particularly enjoyed the presence of Lillias White, a huge talent in the New York stage, as April's neighbor who is willing to share her kitchen with this crazy neighbor in need.

Just be warned to eat at your own risk....

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