The Family Man [DVD]

Good movie 🎬

Great holiday movie.

1st, Nick Cage 20 yrs ago. Mature, gorgeous and great actor! Tea Leoi, most beautiful woman ever. Don Cheadle, gives Nick a peak at 'what could have been '. Beautiful, smart, and touching movie.

Cage does some of his best work in this romcom with Téa Leoni. Great acting, great writing. A very enjoyable date movie.

What a great movie to watch with the family. It has some fun moments for adults and very relatable, but also has some cute things that young adults would enjoy as well. Tia Leoni’s character is just fantastic and the chemistry between her and Nick cage really adds to the value of this movie. The premise is great as well. It’s sort of gives a different flavor to. It’s a wonderful life. No. So cute! Watch every year.

By now you probably now more or less what the plot of this film is. If that plot sounds appealing, you will definitely like this film. Well written, well directed, and very well acted, it takes a potentially schmaltzy premise and makes a very enjoyable film out of it. Although the DVD box has the reviewer quote "Hilarious" on the front, for the most part this is an amusing and sentimental film, rather than a knee-slapper. Once you accept the fantasy premise, most of the film rings true. Sure, if the road not taken involves being married to Tea Leoni, the deck is stacked a bit. But I really bought into the emotional truth at the core of this film. My only quibble [SPOILER ALERT] concerns the ending. Once Jack has come to love his suburban Jersey life and then is jerked back into his investment banker life, his actions don't really seem convincing. After he tracks Kate down to her townhouse as she packs to leave for Paris, would he really turn away and leave without a greater effort to connect with her? And having gone to the airport to make one last attempt to convince her to stay, would he once again nearly turn away after making only another feeble effort? Seems inconsistent with his hard-driving nature and with the epiphany he had experienced in his Jersey life. The brief scene that immediately precedes these scenes in which he tells his investment banker colleagues that he buys into his NYC life isn't enough to justify the feebleness of his subsequent efforts to win back Kate. Clearly, these final scenes were meant to increase the drama of the eventual reconnection, but alone in the film they don't ring true to me.Finally, there is a little bit of a glitch in the film. [Continued spoiler alert] At one point, Jack finds out that he and Kate moved from Greenwich Village to Jersey only after Kate became pregnant. Their oldest child is at most five (more likely four), and 13 years have past between 1987, when Jack left for London, and 2000, when the movie is set. So that means they lived in Greenwich Village pursuing their Manhattan careers for at least seven years before settling in Jersey - unless, implausibly, Jack began working at Big Ed's early on and was commuting back and forth every day from Manhattan to Jersey. A long enough time, you would think, for Jack to have made progress in the world of Manhattan finance, even without benefit of the London internship, and for Kate to have continued on her actual (non-pro bono lawyer) career path. Presumably, the filmmakers needed a significant span of time to make Jack's rise to the top of the investment banking world plausible and to match Nicholas Cage's age (although Tea Leoni could easily have passed for being in her late 20s), and making their kids older would have made them less cute. Unfortunately, though, the chronology doesn't quite add up. Still, a terrifically entertaining film (particularly at Christmas)!

Good

If you haven't seen it yet-wait until Christmas and pop it in for a sweet story about life and the people we love. I am a Nick Cage fan but even if you aren't he does a great job playing both sides of what makes a man a success.

The characters are not terribly well developed and the plot lines are naive and often unclear. Nevertheless the two main actors carry the story through some weird and very uncertain magical life-shifts and we accepted most of the flaws right to the end. And that's where we parted company and will throw out the DVD. The ending just does not make sense at any level. It's Sleepless in Seattle meets Groundhog Day. I can think of at least three other endings which would have left the audience cheering but this one is just crazily mixed up. He gives a speech referring in depth to his alternate life (after which most listeners would have called the funny-doctors) and the impression left with the audience is that he's going to try to recreate that life after a gap of 13 years and two very different lives but with a huge amount more cash in the bank. Just doesn't work.

One of my fav films and the DVD is not easy to come by so I snapped this one up. Promptly despatched and still in a cellophane sealed cover. I deducted two stars as the film stutters for a few seconds towards the end but not enough to spoil the enjoyment of the film.

Family Man is a great family movie with a great story and very enjoyable. Very well chosen characters with a very meaningful story that makes you think about what is really important in our lives. The Blu Ray picture quality is average and I am sure more could have been done to achieve a clearer picture but its good enough. Great movie

If you've ever wondered what your life would have been like if you had made certain decisions in your life and wished you could have seen if your life would have turned out better or worse then being Jack Campbell (Nicholas Cage) would seem like a dream come true. Except such a decision is more difficult when you seem to have it all and as for Jack he has a well paid job as a Wall Street Investment Banker, he has a fast car, a luxurious appartment in which he can entertain plenty of beautiful women. Jack feels his life is complete until one day he intervenes in a robbery at a local store and by explaining that his life is better than the thiefs he awakens to find himself in the arms of his ex girlfriend (Tea Leoni) from 13 years ago, a confused Jack is then confronted by his two children and pet dog. It's from that moment that Jack looks into the life he missed and after trying to retain the life he left he finds out that the wealthiest man is the man who has a family.Cage is on top form as he tries to convince the strangers around him that he is the real Jack. It sets up comedic moments as well as moments of complete desperation on the part of Cage as he tries to gain back his old life while sticking with the family forced upon him. Leoni is the perfect wife who unlike Jack is a non profit lawyer. With that the messages in the film are many, whether it's the age old debate of you're not really happy when your wealthy or alone, to the contrasts between the big money hungry city and suburbia where everyone knows your name and respects you despite your status in life. For me the film is mostly about the decisions we make and how they mould who we become and what life we lead, whether it will be a good or bad choice you will never know if it was the best one.The film has a lot of sentimentality especially between Jack and his children which increasingly becomes more touching and tragic towards the end when his glimpse of what could have been draws to a finish. Indeed whether you like your films butch or not you will not help but sympathise with the messages and excellent interaction between each of the characters Jack meets, all of them who love him in different ways. By the time the final credits role you suddenly see the fast cars and high paid jobs as less important than the relationships we have.

I was nabbed in my local store by someone saying, "Have you watched The Family Man yet"? Well, I hadn't!It's fairly old. The story is potentially good, although it wasn't as lovey-dovey as I was expecting.I have given it a mid-score - not great, not bad. That pretty much sums it up!