The Family Man: Is This Like A Christmas Joke?!

Hey everybody! Sorry for the hiatus and delay, but I’ve been working on some other projects, getting some life stuff sorted out, and I’m moving in a couple of days on my birthday! Still, I felt like I needed to get this one out before Christmas, so here we are, back in the Cage.

The movie is a pretty standard It’s a Wonderful Life-style Christmas plot, but like if it was written by somebody who had never seen It’s a Wonderful Life and also wanted to make a movie that was much worse than It’s a Wonderful Life. I watched this movie twice and I’m still fuzzy on the details, so buckle the fuck up.

Nicolas Cage plays Jack Campbell, a rich jerk who left his girlfriend twelve years ago to pursue some kind of law school or something. Now he has sex with a different woman each night, he has a walk-in closet filled with suits, and he has a really nice sports car. He’s very rich and important at his business job where there’s a big business merger happening with Europe.

Then his ex-girlfriend from twelve years ago calls and leaves a message and he’s like “I can’t, I’m too busy with the big business merger” and he doesn’t call her back. That night, Don Cheadle robs a convenience store because they refuse to cash his lottery ticket, so Cage buys the lottery ticket and then hangs out with Don Cheadle. Turns out Don Cheadle is an angel named Cash Money.

Don Cheadle is an angel named Cash Money. Hey, screenwriters David Diamond and David Weissman? Fuck you.

Nicolas Cage says something like “I wonder what my life would be like if I never left Tea Leoni,” and Don Cheadle says “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR HAHAHA” and guess what fucking happens. Nicolas Cage wakes up and the world is now like what would have happened if he stayed with Tea Leoni. He’s got two kids, a house in the suburbs, he works at a tire store, and his best friend is Jeremy Piven.

For the next fucking hour we basically just watch Nic Cage terrorize this family that he has NO REAL RELATION TO until he learns to love them as much as they love him. To be clear, he is literally a different person life-swapped into another person’s family.

I won’t even get into what happens over that hour because none of it fucking matters. And I don’t mean that like “Oh this movie is so bad that none of it matters” (even though that’s also true.) I mean that once Cage learns to love his new family and resigns to being with them for eternity, Don Cheadle shows up and yanks it all away.

Everything. Cage wakes up in his bed like nothing ever happened. That whole reality? Just a dream. Nothing mattered. He calls Tea Leoni, goes and visits her and she’s like “Hey I’m moving to Paris, here’s a box of your shit.” That’s all she wanted.

And then he chases her to the airport, delivers a speech that should have seemed completely batshit and honestly, REALLY troubling to Tea Leoni about how they live in the suburbs and have two kids and they go to Christmas parties and shit. At this point, any reasonable person would have said “No, Nicolas Cage, you’re clearly drunk and we haven’t spoken in ten years, I’m moving to Paris, bye.” But Tea Leoni’s just like “Yeah ok let’s get coffee.”

Hey, Brett Ratner? Fuck you.

It’s a Wonderful Life is a great movie because it’s a warning to Jimmy Stewart. The angel tells him “Look, you think that the world would be better without you, but that’s not true. You’re important.” In The Family Man, Don Cheadle’s like “Hey, this is the life you could have lived but you fucking didn’t and you never will. Tea Leoni’s got her own shit going on, and you barging back into her life is massively disruptive but you’re going to do it anyway because you’re a selfish dick.”

That being said, there was no Uncle Billy in The Family Man, so overall, it’s a better movie than It’s a Wonderful Life.

CHRISTMAS CAGEMARKS:

Shirtless: Shit yeah Cage pops off that shirt and dances around screaming opera.

Shaving: Cage stays mysteriously clean shaven the whole film, but we never see him with a razor. Hm.

Cage scream: There are several scattered throughout the movie.

Overacting: Cage runs around his apartment shirtless, SCREAMING opera. Not singing. Screaming. He also just freaks the fuck out at Tea Leoni because she doesn’t want him to buy a $4000 suit.

Underacting: Cage handles being life-swapped surprisingly well at times. Not a lot, but at times.

Weird dialogue: Cage’s airport monologue is delivered with such a terrifying intensity that you can see the sheer horror in Tea Leoni’s eyes as she wonders whether Cage is the greatest actor of all time or if he actually thinks that Don Cheadle showed him an alternate reality where they were married.

Describing violence: This is a family movie, Cage is a good boy about this one.

Running: Yeah, he does some snow running with some comical slipping around.

Kissing: Yeah he gives Tea Leoni a few big ol’ smooches.

The Family Man is not a good movie. It’s a movie with an extremely heavy-handed message, but no real pay-off. We never find out what happens to Cage or Leoni’s characters in the real world, Jeremy Piven’s best friend character is completely abandoned, along with various other subplots, and we Don Cheadle’s character is relegated to three scenes, grossly under-using the extremely talented star of House of Pies.

Ultimately, fuck you Brett Ratner. You’re a cinematic terrorist and you need to stop directing these terrible movies.

May you always inflect the weirdest fucking words when yelling at your imaginary spouse,

Nat

P.S. the original promotional website from 2000 for the Family Man is still up.

P.P.S. Fuck you Brett Ratner.