the family man movie review

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It's a funny thing about supernatural movies. The black characters are always the ones with all the insights into the occult, but they never get to be the occulted. Consider Whoopi Goldberg in " Ghost ," Will Smith in "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and now Don Cheadle in "The Family Man." They're all on good terms with the paranormal, but act only as guides for Demi Moore , Matt Damon , Nicolas Cage , et al. They're always the medium but never the message.

In "The Family Man," Cage plays Jack Campbell, a businessman who is ruled by his career. He has no personal life to speak of, works on Christmas Eve and doesn't even bother to return a phone message from Kate Reynolds ( Tea Leoni ), his girlfriend from college. In 1987, we learn, Jack flew off for a year in London, even though Kate tearfully begged him to stay. She feared if he left, they'd never get married, and she was right.

Now, through the paranormal intervention of a taxi driver (Cheadle) who acts as his guide, or portal, or something, Jack goes to sleep as a wealthy bachelor and awakens in a parallel time-track where apparently he did fly back from London, marry Kate and father two children. He also now has a dog, which is slobbering all over him.

The heart of the movie is his gradual realization that his other life has somehow disappeared, that he's now a family man, that he has been granted the opportunity to experience all that he missed by putting his career ahead of personal goals. I always wonder, in movies like this, why the hero has been transferred into the alternate life but has retained the original memories--but of course if he had the alternate memories, he wouldn't know anything had happened.

Tea Leoni (" Deep Impact ," " Flirting With Disaster ") is lovable as the wife, and does a good job of covering the inevitable moments when she must (we think) realize that a stranger is inhabiting her husband's body. The story takes a sitcom turn, as Jack finds out he works for his father-in-law as a tire salesman and tries to talk his way back into the big money in Manhattan.

I liked the movie, liked Cage, liked Leoni, smiled a lot, and yet somehow remained at arm's length, because I was having a parallel-life experience of my own. I kept remembering a movie named " Me Myself I ," which came out last spring and did a more persuasive and thoughtful job of considering more or less the same plot. In that one, Rachel Griffiths is a workaholic writer who through supernatural intervention is transported into married life with the guy she loved 15 years ago. She suddenly has three children, etc. The two movies even share a plot point: One of the kids is observant, and knows this is not his real parent. "When's Mommy gonna be home?" asks Griffiths' character's son; "You're not really Daddy, are you?" asks Jack's daughter.

Why similar movies get made at the same time is a good question. Demi Moore's " Passion of Mind ," from last spring, was about a character shuttling nightly between two lives. And of course another wellspring of "The Family Man" is " It's a Wonderful Life ," except that this time the dark version is reality and the warm family world is the fantasy--or whatever it is.

One problem with the underlying plot is, how do you dispose of the family in the alternative world after the supernatural visitor learns his lesson? "Me Myself I" handled that neatly with actual contact between the two versions of the heroine. "The Family Man" doesn't find a satisfactory resolution: Not that it's crucial, but it would have been nice. The movie is sweet, light entertainment, but could have been more.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Trigger Warning

Film credits.

The Family Man (2000)

Rated PG-13 For Sensuality and Some Language

124 minutes

Nicolas Cage as Jack Campbell

Tea Leoni as Kate Reynolds

Jeremy Piven as Arnie

Don Cheadle as Cash

Makenzie Vega as Annie

Josef Sommer as Lassiter

Directed by

• Brett Ratner
• David Diamond
• David Weissman

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• DVD & Streaming

The Family Man

• Comedy , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Nicolas Cage, Téa Leoni, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Piven, Amber Valletta

Home Release Date

• Brett Ratner

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Movie Review

Jack Campbell is a successful Wall Street trader accustomed to life’s “finer” things. Designer clothes. Gourmet dining. Willing women. Prestige. Power. Jack has it all … or does he?

After calmly thwarting a robbery on Christmas eve, Jack gets a surreal reward—the chance to see what life would’ve been like had he married his college sweetheart and become The Family Man . Jack wakes up Christmas morning in suburban New Jersey beside his wife, Kate, and is playfully assaulted by a rambunctious 3-year-old who calls him “Daddy.” He panics. It seems none of his city friends recognize him, yet strangers in Teaneck treat him as one of their own.

Some very funny scenes involve a jaded Jack reluctantly playing the part of a domesticated male. Walking dogs. Changing babies. Selling tires retail! But just as he begins to enjoy the routine and the people in it, he must return to the life he chose, which now feels empty by comparison. Imagine Capra with a twist: It Could’ve Been a Wonderful Life.

And this could’ve been a wonderful family film if not for profanity, sexual situations, alcohol use and fairly explicit nudity. That’s a shame because, like a holiday cordial, The Family Man has a sweet center. A balm for macho mid-life crisis, it makes strong statements in favor of personal integrity, the value of family and the foolishness of infidelity. It also romanticizes the idea of couples growing old together. If only the movie’s delightful themes weren’t unequally yoked with disappointing moments.

Bob Smithouser

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The Family Man

Cast & crew.

Glenn Jordan

Eddie Madden

Meredith Baxter

Mercedes Cole

Paul Clemens

Denny Madden

The Family Man (2000)

Earlier this year David Duchovny starred opposite Minnie Driver in Return to Me , a charming romantic fable about a widower who gets a second chance at love when he meets a woman who later turns out to be a heart-transplant survivor who just happens to be the recipient of his deceased first wife’s heart.

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/spiritual value, age appropriateness, mpaa rating, caveat spectator.

Now Duchovny’s wife Téa Leoni stars opposite Nicholas Cage in The Family Man , another romantic fable about a man who gets a second chance at love, this time when supernatural forces give him a glimpse of the life he left behind when he chose not to marry his college sweetheart. In the past I’ve felt that Duchovny and Leoni could both be rather wooden actors (witness Leoni’s flat performances in Deep Impact and Bad Boys ); but this material seems to suit them well, and they both make engaging, attractive romantic leads. Perhaps someday they’ll do a project like this together.

If so, we must just hope that it’s more like Return to Me and less like The Family Man , a movie so flawed that I can’t recommend it even as a modest holiday entertainment. If it were only predictable, syrupy, and overlong, The Family Man might still be worth watching for the appealing performances from Leoni and Cage. Alas, its problems are more deep-rooted than that.

Here in a nutshell is one way to put the movie’s central problem without giving too much away. After an opening prologue set in 1987 — in which Jack Campbell (a somewhat youngified Cage) bids farewell to Kate Reynolds (Leoni in long hair) at an airport gate, reassuring her that they will be together again in a year — the story fast-forwards to the present, where Jack, still single and a hotshot Wall Street power broker, gets a message from the woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in 13 years. "Old flames are like old tax returns," another character advises him. "You file them for three years, and then you cut them loose."

Well, when all is said and done, the message of this movie might be put this way: Old flames are neat to look up years and years later, because who knows, the two of you might have had something really special if you’d stayed together, and maybe if you’re both still single you might still be able to hook up with each other after all. Which, in another film, might not be a completely worthless notion, but this movie takes such a roundabout way of getting there that it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Here is another way of putting it that gives away rather more. As anyone who’s seen the trailer knows, the premise of the film is that Jack meets a mysterious being (played by Don Cheadle and inexplicably called "Cash Money") who transports him into another reality in which he and Kate are married and living in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood with a couple of kids, a mortgage, a minivan, and a slobbery dog.

And of course at first Jack is horrified by his mundane domestic responsibilities (changing poopy diapers, walking the dog), blue-collar job (selling tires for his father-in-law’s business), tacky wardrobe (ill-fitting sweaters), and so on — the movie spares nothing of the lurid horrors of middle-class life. But, naturally, in time he becomes attached to his children and his marriage. One night, out to dinner with Kate, he asks her if she ever has any second thoughts or regrets about what might have been. Sometimes, she admits, she wonders about other directions her life might have taken: "But as soon as I do that, I erase everything in my life I’m sure of. The kids. Us."

So far, so good. The problem I had in the end — and this is a spoiler, so feel free to bail out of this review now, but I think you deserve to know what you would be getting yourself into — is that the movie really does erase everything this Kate is sure of, everything that for the last several weeks of his life (and the last hour and a half of mine) Jack has been learning to love.

Thus we get another airport scene in which Jack (now returned to the old familiar world, in which he and Kate haven’t seen each other in 13 years) tries to persuade this Kate (a high-powered lawyer) not to get on a plane. He speaks with desperate eloquence about a phantom life together that only he remembers: the children they never had, the marriage they never made. And somehow, something he says touches her, and she sits down with him for a cup of coffee. And the credits roll.

Will it work out for them? Will they make a new life together? Well, who cares? I’ve got nothing invested in this Kate, this jet-setter who’s about to leave for Paris. I only just met her. The Kate I cared about — the Kate Téa Leoni brought to life for me for ninety-plus minutes — was a suburban housewife and pro-bono lawyer who had two kids and wrestled with her husband over a piece of chocolate cake on the stairs of their Teaneck home.

And now, in this world with Jack sipping coffee with a stranger in an airport and the credits rolling, that Kate is gone, and those kids will never be born. Well, there’s a feel-good ending for you. How would you like to be able to remember children that you loved and who loved you and called you "Daddy" or "Mommy," and know that you will never find them anywhere ever again — not even (assuming you want to take such things into account) in heaven? (Some critics have lazily described the "Cash Money" character as an "angel" — for absolutely no good reason at all, unless you count the fact that Clarence was an angel in It’s a Wonderful Life . The movie draws on the idea of "Christmas magic" but contains no trace of Christian themes or imagery, with the possible exception of what looks like a cross above Jack’s head on the street during a conversation with Cash Money.)

There are other problems as well. Despite the fact that Jack is supposed to fall in love with his suburban existence, I never got any sense that the filmmakers had any real affection, or indeed anything but contempt, for middle-class life. Jack may come to accept not being able to afford pork medallions in the finest Manhattan restaurants, but the movie never shows him eating a homecooked meal with any actual pleasure or appreciation. He resigns himself to life without $2400 Zegna suits, but never comes to any awareness that a $25 sweater might actually be comfortable and attractive. He may or may not be willing to live out his days away from the glass offices of Wall Street, but there’s never any indication that selling tires is anything but a living death. (The movie explains that it was because of his father-in-law’s heart attack that he stepped in to help manage the family business, so perhaps it was a heroic martyrdom; but it’s still essentially seen as a vocational death.)

And it may be worse still. One critic I read wrote approvingly that this ending allowed Jack and Kate to have "the best of both worlds" — that is, success and career fulfillment first, love and marriage and family afterwards. Is that the film’s real message: postpone marriage and family, pursue your career, and then when you get married you won’t have to worry about college funds or graceless minivans?

Whatever the problem here, it seems safe to say that throwing Money at it hasn’t helped. If you decide, against my advice, to see this movie, remember Cash’s warning to Jack: "You brought this on yourself."

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The Family Man (PG-13)

Something about Christmas causes reflection. Perhaps it’s the cheer the season tends to impart, or the closeness it brings with friends and family we might see but a handful of times during the year. And Christmas movies are a good a gauge of this as any. Take renditions of “Scrooge,” or “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which teach their main character a lesson in appreciating what he’s got. Other films, such as “Home Alone” aptly accomplish the same mission, showing its protagonist the importance of family by granting his wish to have them disappear. In this same vein, the 2000 comedy/drama “ The Family Man ” attempts to revisit this blueprint once again. With everyday humor, insight, and bittersweet tone, the movie manages to deliver genuine laughs and drama, but its open-to-interpretation ending may ultimately leave some viewers cold.

“The Family Man” follows the familiar tale. Nicholas Cage plays Jack Campbell, president of a financial company ruled by the almighty dollar. In the middle of a multi-billion dollar merger, he gladly offers to spend Christmas Eve crunching the numbers in his office long after the rest of his team has gone home for the holiday. And Christmas Day? Jack eagerly agrees to fly to Aspen to handhold a major drug manufacturer through the remaining days of the deal. His boss, Peter Lassiter (Josef Sommer, “Patch Adams”) is only too happy to accept Jack’s willingness to fight for the company, even at his own detriment. “You’re a credit to Capitalism,” Lassiter states.

We learn more about Jack: he is rational, seldom acting emotionally or impulsively. A phone message at his office from an ex-girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni) sets the tone for a remembrance of years before when he left her at the airport for business school and never saw her again. Questions abound, among them, should he call her back or let the past go. A fair question. Of course, Lassiter has advice for this as well. “Old flames are like old tax returns…put ‘em in the file cabinet for three years, then you cut ‘em loose.”

However, Jack’s reminiscence, and his by the clock life are put on hold when he has an encounter with a philosophical thief (Don Cheadle, “Swordfish”) who, hearing Jack rave about how great his life is, offers him a glimpse. Making plans with a casual fling that night, Jack falls asleep in his apartment in Manhattan and wakes up the next morning in suburban New Jersey with the life he would have had had he stayed with Kate instead of going to business school. A single bachelor in New York, he now finds he is married to Kate, has two young children, and wakes up just time to answer a knock on the door from his parents. He panics, drives to his office in Manhattan where no one recognizes him.  He realizes that his old life is now gone, and he’s faced with a burning question: How long? “I’m in the middle of a deal,” he entreats to the thief. He doesn’t get the answer he was hoping. “You’re in the middle of a new deal now.” “The Family Man” is fairly humorous movie, driven by a performance by Nicholas Cage unlike many roles that line his past. There’s really no trace of comic characters such as Cameron Poe in “Con Air” or the vicious Castor Troy in “Face Off.” Toned down, Cage plays a man baffled by circumstance but one who begins to see the life he could have had is just a good – if not better – option than his current breakneck – albeit wealthy – lifestyle.

Buffering his portryal, Tea Leoni (whose roles in movies such as “Jurassic Park III,” and  “Spanglish” were both unfocused and sporadic), delivers a sweet performance, making Kate a likeable character, both in Jack’s glimpse and later in his modern life. Some of the best scenes in the movie exist between Leoni and Cage; first, as Jack struggles to understand his current predicament, and later, as he not only begins to accept it, but, we see, grows to love it.

Fans of romance will most likely be drawn to scenes such as an anniversary dinner in Manhattan, but some of the best scenes in the movie involve Jack and Kate as they manage their way through the humdrum of suburban life, such as a Christmas party at a friends house and an “all day” trip to the local shopping mall to buy gifts for the kids after the holidays. Anyone who has attended a family holiday get together or been dragged to one store after another with their parents will likely find humor in the honest yet comedic way these scenes are presented.

Of course other parts of the movie are a bit more somber (such as when Jack almost has an affair, only to be stopped by his best friend (Jeremy Piven), or when Jack realizes with regret that his glimpse may be over and he has to return to his old life. These scenes work because of the rapport that Cage seems to have with his co-stars, as well as with the development he puts into both Jacks – one a multi-million-dollar player, the other a resigned but somehow relatable everyman. One scene toward the end, as he fights off sleep to avoid leaving his newfound life, resonates both a bittersweet and melancholy tone.

As a Christmas movie, “The Family Man” succeeds at hitting the correct notes of the holiday season, but where it may disappoint some viewers lies in its overall plot. Fans of “It’s a Wonderful Life” will doubtless enjoy that film for the lesson it imparts – a lesson George Bailey is able to take and apply to his life he took for granted. Even the doleful 2002 comedy “ Click ,” with its heavy overtones of depression, allowed its main character to grow and learn from his past errors. However,  “the Family Man,” seems to go the opposite way, showing its main character what could have been without giving him any kind of chance to get there. Subsequently, the lessons he learns seem superfluous, leaving Jack, as well as the viewing audience, feeling they are only waking from a pleasant dream and must go back to dreary reality.

It’s not to say “The Family Man” is a waste of time. Certainly better Christmas movies exists, but, among a sea of holiday movies often overly-reliant on cheese and touchy emotion, Cage and company do a fairly solid job delivering an alternative to the standard “What would life be like if” motif while at the same time underscoring the humdrum and often-banality of the Christmas season. The movie, as the holiday itself, is best enjoyed with family members present – a lesson Jack learns the hard way, and perhaps one that others, if wise, would do well not to take for granted.

– by Mark Ziobro 

About Author

Mark is a New York based film critic and founder and Managing Editor of The Movie Buff. He has contributed film reviews to websites such as Movie-Blogger and Filmotomy, as well as local, independent print news medium. He is a lifelong lover of cinema, his favorite genres being drama, horror, and independent. Follow Mark @The_Movie_Buff on Twitter for all site news.

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The Family Man Review

22 Dec 2000

126 minutes

Family Man, The

Picking up on similar themes to It's A Wonderful Life (1946) , The Family Man begins on Christmas Eve, with a man seemingly happy with his life, yet given the chance to see how different it all could have been.

It is, without a doubt, Nic Cage's film. As Jack, he is in every scene and if you're a fan, there's much to enjoy here. He gives a nicely understated performance, managing to be close to the edge without going over the top. His would-be wife, Tea Leoni, is so damned perfect it's hard to see why Jack, for much of the film, finds his alternative reality so unappealing. His kids aren't on screen enough to be annoying and there are clever scenes in which they coach him on adapting to fatherhood. Where the film really succeeds is in avoiding what could have been some horrible cloying moments - Cage's Jack is grounded enough to keep sentimentality at bay.

But despite all these plus points, so much is left underdeveloped that it becomes a distraction. An evil businessman called Sidney Potter is mentioned, which those looking for a Wonderful Life link may expect to be taken further, but he's never mentioned again. Jack's "alternative" best friend is the excellent Jeremy Piven, but he disappears half-way through the story, as does a women Jack proposes having an affair with.

Other sub-plots are set up and ignored - the businesses in both realities are in crises that aren't resolved, Jack is told he can't afford to spend much money as a family man and then splashes out what would be several months income on a night out with no repercussions. But, toughest call of all, it's hard to tell which life Jack really prefers, which means the film lacks the rip-roaring finish that would make it a true feel-good movie.

Festival Reviews

Showcasing the best of movies, and film festivals from around the world., movie review: the family man, 2000.

Top Christmas Movie of All-Time

THE FAMILY MAN, 2000 Classic Movie Review Directed by Bret Ratner Starring Nicolas Cage, Téa Leoni Review by Russell Hill

A successful unmarried Wall Street broker wakes one morning living the life of a family man with a wife and two kids.

Very similar to It’s a Wonderful Life, The Family Man is a movie that could be forgiven for acting as a vehicle for Nicholas Cage’s talents, but is much more than that.

A fantastical tale of asking questions that everyone must ask themselves at one point in life, it is Jack Campbell’s (Cage) story we follow. Jack is a very successful and extremely rich Wall Street broker. One Christmas Eve, he finds himself on the verge of landing a deal that would make him richer beyond his wildest dreams, as well as earning major kudos with the boss. When waking on Christmas Day, a woman (Leoni) is draped across him, followed by two young children who run into the room. Freaked out to say the least, Cage overreacts. Where is the life he once had, he asks himself.

The night before, Jack had helped stop what could have been quite a horrible robbery. The person responsible for the potential robbery (Cheadle) seems to know who Jack is. What do you want Jack, he asks. I’ve got everything I need, replies Jack. But the next morning when he awakes, everything he has that made him happy such as money, a great career and top-quality suits are all gone. Due to his good deed, Jack believes he has found himself in hell. But all is not lost.

In spite of this minimalist monetary and possession existence, there are many good elements to this new life. Loving wife of thirteen years, two adorable kids and a best friend that would walk over fiery coals for him. Although his life is of a lower status than before, men want to be him and women want to have him. But to Jack, this isn’t what he wanted. Despite not possessing this in his previous affluent life, he sacrificed this exact situation for his career but, as in every situation that appears when we are presented with it, we just deal with it. Roll on. Pull your socks up. Get on with it. But, with Jack’s predicament and situation, will he actually enjoy himself or wish he was somewhere else?

For those who have not seen The Family Man, and believe me I’ve met many who know nothing of this movie, it would be too easy to class it as simply a vehicle for Cage. Although it does borrow elements from It’s a Wonderful Life, the look of the movie is a very classy one that moves along very quickly with it ending as soon as you know it. This is exactly the type of movie Cage is made for. Think of Cage’s more recent mainstream movies, and you are sure to reel in horror at their very existence. Ghost Rider was an abomination of cinema, and The Wicker Man should never have been given the green light for production. And don’t get me started on the National Treasure franchise. Cage is simply not suited for these kinds of movies, with their high-octane moments, and is more suitable to play anything but an action-hero. In The Family Man, he is an opposite character and definitely not your stereotypical leading man. As in The Weather Man, his depressive character was much more suitable for him and, as with The Family Man, harks back to the days when he started out in more independent movies as an everyday-man.

But hey, Cage wasn’t the only actor in the film. Not always a fan of Tea Leoni’s work, her performance in Deep Impact was laughable to say the least, this is by far the best role I have seen her in. Her character Kate is one of the loving wife and Leoni really pulls it off. Her girl-next-door persona fits well into the character of Kate, and is as cute as a baby seal. Cheadle is great too. Despite his talents wasted in the horrific remake of The Italian Job, which just like The Wicker Man remake should never have been made, he relishes every screen moment. At some points, his performance seems very Shakespearian in the way he recites his lines and is certainly admirable. His scenes, although minimal, is used to his full potential. Cheadle has since moved onto greater roles since The Family Man, a prime example being Hotel Rwanda, and is sure to continue being a shining example of what an actor in Hollywood should be. As long as he doesn’t take any more roles like in The Italian Job, that is.

The surprise of the film, in this reviewer’s opinion, is the role of Jack and Kate’s young daughter Annie. Played by Makenzie Vega, she was only six years of age when this film was released but acts beyond her years. In the Making of… feature on the DVD, Cage remarks how great an actress she is. Acting alongside an A-List cast might be daunting to some people, but Vega takes it in her stride and certainly matches her fellow actors in all scenes she appears in. She only had a solitary role before playing Annie, and since then has gone on to appear in such movies as Sin City and X-Men 3. This reviewer hopes for her continued success in Hollywood.

To those who have not seen The Family Man, I strongly recommend you see this. I know it may sound difficult but try to cast Cage’s recent roles out of your mind. The performances by all is of the highest quality. Tea Leoni for once gives a credible performance and the emergence of Makenzie Vega as a potentially great talent is certainly worth a watch.

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THE FAMILY MAN

"scrooge lite".

What You Need To Know:

(BB, C, H, LLL, V, SS, NN, AA, D) Very moral worldview with slight Christian references, slight romantic overtones & significant humanist content.; 17 obscenities, 22 light profanites many of which are exclamations & baby relieves himself on father; threat of violence; clearly implied fornication & adultery considered but rejected; upper male nudity, shadow female nudity fairly explicit in shower, nude doll on bar, & nude baby; alcohol use & drunkenness; and, smoking.

More Detail:

THE FAMILY MAN has been billed as a modern IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, a movie that didn’t do well at the box office but soon after its initial release became everyone’s favorite. Structurally, however, FAMILY MAN is more like “Scrooge Lite” and reminiscent of DISNEY’S THE KID earlier this year.

THE FAMILY MAN opens in 1987 with college student Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage in one of his best roles) saying goodbye to his girlfriend Kate as he heads off to England for an internship with a bank. Thirteen years later, Jack Campbell is fornicating with a beautiful blonde in a gorgeous penthouse apartment. He is Mr. Rich and Famous. He drives his Ferrari down to his office on Christmas Eve and proceeds to negotiate a $120 million merger. In a friendly, but Scrooge-like fashion, he wants his staff there at noon on Christmas Day to complete the deal. He says that their Christmas will come when they complete the merger and receive their bonuses. Alan, his right hand man, wants to go home and be with his family, but Jack convinces him that the deal is too important.

Late that night, Jack is feeling so good about himself that he decides to walk home. He stops at a corner market to buy some eggnog and is caught up in a very strange situation. A black man with a lottery ticket starts waving a gun, insisting that the store accept the ticket. In an uncharacteristic act of generosity, Jack buys the ticket and tells the black man that he can help him, and that everybody needs something. They step outside. Behind them is a giant cross on a tall office building. Suddenly, it is the black man who is in control. He asks Jack what he needs and tells Jack that, for his good deed, Jack is going to get a glimpse of what his life could’ve been. Instead of waking up in his penthouse on Christmas morning, he wakes up to in a little red brick row house in New Jersey.

His former girlfriend Kate is now his wife. He has two adorable children: an incredibly honest and precocious daughter named Annie, and an adorable baby boy named Josh. Jack is confused and tries to find out what happened.

Driving frantically to New York, he finds out that nobody in his life remembers him. Back in N.J., he finds out that he’s had a complete married life with Kate and that he sells tires at his father-in-law’s tire dealership. He is incredibly disappointed by this mundane, middle-class life. By the end of his brief glimpse of what life could’ve been, he discovers, of course, the real values of life, almost the same way Scrooge discovered the real meaning of Christmas after the three Ghosts gave him a glimpse of his life from a different perspective.

THE FAMILY MAN is a heart-rending movie. Very well written, it makes you laugh and cry. Better yet, it’s an intentionally moral movie. It wants to prove that everyone needs love, marriage, children, and that these things are much more important than fame or fortune, and it does prove its case.

Unlike SCROOGE or IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, however, its spiritual underpinning is much more vague. One can only guess that the African-American man who gives him a glimpse is an angel. Any theological denotations are consciously avoided. There is a cross in the movie and it is Christmas, but regrettably there is also significant profanity, even if some of it is lightweight exclamations. In other words, this is “Christianity Lite,” and, to make sure that it doesn’t offend anybody, Jesus’ name is used as an exclamatory profanity. Furthermore, there’s a conscious earthiness to even the good choices. Drinking is part and parcel to family life, sex is thrilling, especially with your wife, adultery is beguiling. These are not the well-considered virtues of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but they are an attempt to show there’s a better way, though this better way may not remove the elements that too many people associate with fun.

THE FAMILY MAN just avoids being too sappy in places. It’ll strike a responsive chord in many people. It is too bad that it didn’t have more courage to proclaim its convictions with more integrity.

The Family Man

Reviewed by: Kevin Burk CONTRIBUTOR

TRUE LOVE —What is true love and how do you know when you have found it? Answer

husband wife relationship

angels in the Bible

What else does the Bible teach about angels? Answer

extramarital affair

crisis of conscience

N icolas Cage and Téa Leoni star in the latest holiday drama that provides a variation on the “It’s a Wonderful Life” theme—what would my life have been like if I had taken the “road less traveled?” Cage plays Jack Campbell, a successful, ruthless, driven Wall Street executive who receives a strange and wonderful gift, a glimpse at what his life could have been had he chosen to stay with his then-girlfriend Kate, rather than pursue an overseas business internship that ultimately doomed their relationship.

Jack is whisked away to a life he knows nothing of by a mysterious stranger. Waking up in the average suburban life, Jack finds himself with a wife (Kate), two kids, a dog and a mortgage. The usual fish out of water jokes are played for some laughs, especially Jack’s disgust at suddenly being denied all the “finer things” in life that he is accustomed to. But, along the way, he realizes that he could have a beautiful woman, wonderful children and a life that, while at times monotonous, is wonderful in its fill of simple joys and love. In the end, Jack realizes how much he loves this new life, yet must let this “unreal” life go. I won’t spoil the ending, but Jack, as you may guess, tries to put things to right in his “real” life upon his return.

This film, overall, had a good moral worldview, namely that one can have all this world can offer and still be missing out on the best things in life. Love, integrity and faithfulness are held in high regard. However, this film, unfortunately, doles out some very unnecessary content. There is a little profanity, some in front of children, nudity and sexual talk (though at least mostly between a husband and wife) and Jack’s “angel” pulls a gun on him in a scary holdup scene. Still, I recommend this film overall, just leave all but the oldest children at home.

The Family Man

In Theaters: December 22, 2000

July 4, 2018

PG-13 | 2h 5m | Comedy, Romance

Movie Review

Plot Summary

Film Review

Let me just warn you that despite the fact that there were a few objectionable inclusions in the film, I walked out of the theater with a lot to ponder. Although Nic Cage's character is basically a spoiled jerk, one can feel for his confusion and mislead life. Although I couldn't possibly relate to him literally, for some reason I felt myself in his shoes and became wrapped up in the tale. The movie is indeed a reversed 2000 version of It's a Wonderful Life or basically It COULD have been a Wonderful Life . Although I don't think it fair to compare the classic It's a Wonderful Life to this modern film, the similarities are there and the comparison is inevitable. What boggles my mind is why director Brett Ratner couldn't drop a few unnecessary scenes or words to make this a PG film to become a classic for years to come.

The film is a great date movie and has an really touching story. I found myself pondering life's choices and how 1 decision can change the course of your entire life (showing me the severity of following God's perfect Will for my life). Again, I just wish the tainted content wasn't as such and this could have been an annual Christmas classic like it could have so easily been. Perhaps a more polished version will be on TV in several years that could be viewed that way.

In summary, I'm torn about how to rate this movie. I really was moved and really enjoyed, but again, the PG-13 material tainted it enough. It's all stuff that could have been excluded from the movie, too. I want to give it more than 4 stars, but couldn't possibly give it more due to content, so I give it a rating of 4 out of 5 because it could have been so great.

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• Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman Have Surprisingly Great Chemistry in <i>A Family Affair</i>

Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman Have Surprisingly Great Chemistry in A Family Affair

S ometimes, and perhaps increasingly, the pleasure of movies lies in the small things. The congenial Netflix romantic comedy A Family Affair, written by newcomer Carrie Solomon and directed by Richard LaGravenese, a veteran director and screenwriter who knows what he’s doing, mines some territory that’s already familiar from a movie released earlier this year : An “older” single mother tumbles into an affair with a much younger man, inviting judgment and ridicule from those around her. We just saw that idea, played out rather delightfully, in The Idea of You , starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine. In A Family Affair, it’s Nicole Kidman’s successful writer Brooke Harwood who falls for full-of-himself movie star Chris Cole (Zac Efron), though there’s an additional complication: Brooke’s daughter Zara (Joey King) is Chris’ personal assistant, and she can’t stand him.

You can complain that two movies riffing on the same theme, released within a few months of one another, is perhaps one movie too many. (The idea also figures in French filmmaker Catherine Breillat’s fine erotic drama Last Summer, which premiered at Cannes in 2023 and is just now making its way into U.S. theaters.) Or you could see this mini-trend as evidence that several filmmakers are picking up the same scent from the air: women over 50 don’t want to be discarded; they want to be seen, appreciated, loved . The idea is so simple that you wonder why people haven’t been making five movies like this a year, for the past 50 years. But here we are: the older-woman-younger-man thing is still such a novelty that we almost can’t believe our eyes when we see it.

A Family Affair opens with Zara reaching the end of her rope with the childish, demanding Chris, the bulked-up and stuck-up star of a hit action-fantasy franchise . He’s in a restaurant, about to break up with a sweet, if bland, girlfriend who’s expecting a marriage proposal. His parting gift is a pair of diamond earrings—nice work if you can get it—but he doesn’t have them on his person. They’re in Zara’s bag, and she’s stuck in typically horrible Los Angeles traffic. Finally, she makes the delivery, and Chris, callous and clueless, does the deed. Zara collects him to drive him home, and he wriggles in the passenger seat clapping along to Cher’s “I Believe in Love” as it blares from the car stereo, feeling every beat in his cold, hollow, yet also undeniably rambunctious heart. Zara rolls her eyes.

Later, they argue. He fires her, or she quits, it’s hard to tell which. But Chris likes Zara, and he needs her. Hoping to get her back, he goes to her house, or, rather, the not-so-shabby house she shares with her mother, Brooke, who’s ever-so-glamorously dusting her bookshelves to the strains of Blondie’s “Dreaming” when Chris arrives. She doesn’t hear him ring the doorbell, so he walks right in—he’s a movie star, so he can do this! Even he knows it. After a few screwball moments in which she ascertains that he’s not a burglar, the two sit down on the couch and just start talking. There’s tequila involved, and one thing leads to another.

You’ve certainly seen this sort of thing before, but Solomon and LaGravenese (whose resume stretches back to include deeply enjoyable romances like 1998’s Living Out Loud ) aren’t so much out to freshen genre conventions as to lean on their evergreen reliability. Brooke has long been widowed. (She’s very close with her mother-in-law, played with verve by Kathy Bates .) Zara loses it when she finds out her mother is romantically involved with her terrible boss, but she must learn that the world doesn’t revolve around her.

The learning-the-lesson part is where the movie falters. The best part of A Family Affair is the windup, the scenes in which Brooke and Chris get to know each other. On their first real date, Chris asks Brooke if she’d like to go for an after-dinner walk. “Where do you walk in LA?” she asks. “New York!” he says brightly, because in the dreamworld Los Angeles, you’re never far from a soundstage. Although the repartee between Efron and Kidman is amusing enough—the two have played lovers before, in the 2012 film The Paperboy —it may take a little time to adjust to their faces. There’s been plenty of Internet chatter about Efron’s jawline, which has changed dramatically, in size and squareness, in recent years. Efron has been jaunty in brushing off speculation, claiming that he had a serious accident years ago that required his jaw to be reattached—thus the change in shape. And Kidman—well, she’s Kidman. Maybe we need to accept the reality that to be a fifty-something who can attract a thirty-something, you need to have semi-miraculously slowed the ravages of time yourself.

But that’s Hollywood for you, and this is, after all, a film that takes place unapologetically in a land of fantasy. When it sparkles, which is often, it’s perfectly enjoyable. Efron has always been a terrific actor, long before audiences began “taking him seriously,” whatever that means, in The Iron Claw . His timing is dazzling. In an early scene, he sends Zara to the grocery store for a special protein powder—he’s too famous to show his face there himself—and she gets him on the phone to make sure she’s buying the right kind. As she pushes her cart through the store, she marvels aloud at the zillion-and-one varieties of Oreos in the cookie aisle. When she gets to “strawberry shortcake,” we see Chris at home, listening on his phone, his eyes blazing like lightning bolts. “Do you want some?” Zara asks him, tentatively. “Yeah!” he says, as if he’s just become hip to one of the great wonders of the modern world. It’s doubtful the actual product will live up to that promise, but isn’t that always the way when marketing's involved? Later, he’ll find the real thing with Kidman’s Brooke. Together, the two of them are almost too unreal for words. Again, that’s Hollywood for you—a place where, in real life, age is most definitely not just a number. But we can dream, can’t we?

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A Family Affair review: Is Nicole Kidman's Netflix rom-com worth a watch?

Star power can't save Netflix's new movie.

Netflix 's new movie might get quickly compared to The Idea of You due to plot similarities, but unfortunately that doesn't do it any favours — it's lacking the kind of chemistry and compelling conflicts that made Prime Video's movie a recent hit.

Starring Nicole Kidman , Zac Efron and The Kissing Booth 's Joey King, A Family Affair is not as fun as the premise initially promises, and no amount of star power can fix that.

The movie's opening credits introduce viewers to Hollywood movie star Chris Cole (Efron) through a combination of recycled TIFF red-carpet clips, magazine covers highlighting his "world's greatest abs" and a brief appearance in Hot Ones with Sean Evans lending his voice (not his image, though, like he did for Apple TV+'s Loot ) to the occasion.

Chris is mostly known for leading a globally beloved superhero franchise called Icarus Rush , and he is now getting ready to film a new sequel.

To the dismay of his assistant Zara (King), who aspires to being a movie producer, the script (described as " Die Hard meets Miracle on 34th Street with a little bit of Speed ") is absolutely terrible.

Zara is frustrated after addressing Chris' every whim for two years, which includes doing his laundry, writing apology letters and handing him jewellery in order to break women's hearts. That's exactly why she freaks out when her mother Brooke (Kidman) starts a relationship with him after a steamy tequila-driven encounter at her home.

A successful writer and a widow for eleven years, Brooke sees this unexpected new romance as a way to finally let go of the last remnants of her grief and finally be happy beyond her role as a mother. For Chris, Brooke's kindness allows him to be his own person rather than the public character he wasn't sure how to escape.

All valid reasons, but not to Zara, who is determined to never let this happen.

This movie would have been way better if it focused on Brooke and Chris' internal struggles rather than the petty journey of King's protagonist — an irritatingly privileged and entitled 24-year-old who demands to run a major movie star's production company despite having no prior experience and nothing but occasional opinions, and shames her mother for sleeping with someone younger than her.

A Family Affair is Zara's journey into adulthood, as she decides what she wants to do with her life. However, despite King's effort, it's hard to root for her when she is the most dislikable character in the film until the very end.

At least Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron are here to have fun, sharing some of the best moments of the story, like their first date at the restaurant or Chris' over-the-top celebrity persona.

The scene-stealer of the film, though, is Kathy Bates' Leila, Brooke's mother-in-law and Zara's grandmother. There's a warmth in Bates' performance that is sorely lacking in the rest of the film, channeling part of what made her also grandmotherly role in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret so special.

Rom-com fans will be left wanting with A Family Affair , although at least they'll discover strawberry-shortcake Oreos are a real thing.

A Family Affair is now available on Netflix.

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Deputy Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over seven years, mostly for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas . 

Her work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema in the UK. 

She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service .    During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world, and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London.     Now based in the UK, Mireia joined Digital Spy in June 2023 as Deputy Movies Editor. 

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A Family Affair review: Nicole Kidman romance is like a heavily medicated The Idea of You

Remember the film about anne hathaway as a single mum dating a famous younger man here’s another one, but with kidman and zac efron – and a lot less romantic chemistry, article bookmarked.

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Hollywood’s favourite habit of coincidentally releasing two films with the same premise near back to back has returned with Netflix’s A Family Affair . It’s a romcom about the single mother of a daughter, who falls in lust with a much younger, intimidatingly famous man. This is also exactly how you’d describe Prime Video’s recent, Anne Hathaway-fronted The Idea of You . Unfortunately, A Family Affair is the inferior of the two. It’s one of those Netflix productions that feels both under and overproduced, touting major stars (here, Nicole Kidman , Zac Efron, and Joey King ) while being shot and scored like an ad for a depression medication. Side effects may vary.

Kidman stars as widow and lapsed screenwriter Brooke Harwood, whose daughter Zara (King) is the harried assistant to actor Chris Cole (Efron), an amalgamation of the Hollywood Chrises (Evans, Hemsworth, Pine, Pratt). The magazines say he has “the world’s greatest abs”, he’s appeared on an episode of Hot Ones , and he’s currently stuck on the third instalment of a mortifyingly bad superhero franchise.

Zara, fed up, quits. But when Chris turns up at her house to apologise for his bad behaviour, he instead finds her mother, who immediately seduces him through her intimate knowledge of the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur (as someone who frequently uses this tactic, I can assure you it does not actually work). Zara discovers them in flagrante delicto. Naturally, she’s furious and embarrassed. Chris is a serial womaniser, and she’s been forced to watch him love bomb and betray a whole series of beautiful women. Chris, however, swears that this time is different.

Meanwhile, two of the film’s only non-white cast members are Zara’s far more interesting friends (played by YouTuber Liza Koshy and Joy Ride ’s Sherry Cola). They exist only so that the white lead can pointedly neglect them and then learn a lesson from it.

The problem is that no one’s really agreed on what A Family Affair is supposed to be beyond the concept of a relationship, a pair of white lies, and a third-act misunderstanding. Richard LaGravenese’s direction and Carrie Solomon’s script fail to bridge the gap between, for example, the nonsensical and somewhat bad-taste joke about Stevie Wonder and the multiple conversations about dead relatives. It certainly has none of the breezy, relaxed maturity of The Idea of You . And none of its chemistry, either.

There are no bad performances here per se, but there are misaligned ones. Efron is in broad comedy, himbo mode (which he does well, and earnestly). King, once the star of Netflix’s Kissing Booth series, has reverted to that familiar, emphatic style of teen movie acting. Kidman’s just there for a good time. But she’s exactly the kind of talent who can cut loose and maintain composure – even when she’s doing the silliest of romcoms, she melts into her lines with a sort of casual seductiveness that takes most people about three glasses of wine to build up the confidence to achieve.

Efron and Kidman have been good together on screen before, in 2012’s seedy, Floridian crime story The Paperboy . But, here, the only natural chemistry she seems to share is with Kathy Bates, in the role of her dead husband’s mother. A Family Affair could, at one time, have at least sold itself on the originality of its premise – but with that snatched out from under it, all that’s left is an afterthought.

Dir: Richard LaGravenese. Starring: Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King, Liza Koshy, Sherry Cola, Kathy Bates. 12, 113 mins.

‘A Family Affair’ is streaming on Netflix

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Being a Cougar Is So Back

Recent films like The Idea of You and A Family Affair are challenging long-held myths about older women and desirability.

Everything old is new again, as the saying goes. Or rather, everything older . At least when it comes to the age of women being romanced onscreen (and sometimes off), and new when it comes to the young men romancing them.

What’s also new? The direction of this age gap.

In the last two decades, culture has labeled women who pursue these relationships “cougars.” Suggesting an inappropriate power imbalance, and framing the woman as a predator of a sort (that this concern is never applied in the reverse is but one small example of how women are forever held to different standards).

But lately, what has been considered a derogatory punchline is being reclaimed as empowering in the cultural zeitgeist. The last few years, however, have seen a refreshing resurgence of storylines featuring love stories between older women and younger men when we’ve long been accustomed to the opposite. After all, some of the most classic films in Hollywood have starred older male actors and much younger actresses: Gary Cooper (51) and Grace Kelly (23) in High Noon ; Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (24 year age gap) in their many collaborations; Jimmy Stewart (42) and Grace Kelly (now 25) in Rear Window ; Gwyneth Paltrow (26) and Michael Douglas (54) in A Perfect Murder (a classic to some of us!); Tom Cruise and nearly all his recent co-stars.

The film version of The Idea of You was released on Prime Video in May, with Anne Hathaway in the role of Solène, a gallerist who just turned 40, and Nicholas Galitzine playing the much younger Hayes, the frontman of pop sensation August Moon. (Much like real-life Wilde, who was the target of much online vitriol from certain corners of the Internet during her relationship with Styles, when the tabloids catch wind of Solene’s and Hayes’ relationship, she is blasted as a cougar in the press, prompting her daughter to get bullied and teased at school.) And last week, A Family Affair premiered on Netflix starring Nicole Kidman as a successful widowed writer in her early fifties who falls for the boss of her 23-year-old daughter (played by Joey King); the man in question is an over-indulged dimwitted movie star played skillfully by Zac Efron, who is 20 years Kidman’s junior.

While these are the two most recent high-profile examples they are hardly the only ones. In the HBO limited series The Sympathizer , Hoa Xuande’s character, 36, has an affair with Sandra Oh (52) (also: duh). In 2022, Jean Smart won the Emmy for her performance in season 2 of Hacks , which contained an episode where her character has a one-night stand with a much younger man.

We’ve also seen critical interrogations of this relationship dynamic. The 2023 film May December , which was inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau case, is a difficult, if, at times, darkly comedic, look at a relationship between a 36-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy, who go on to marry and have children together. Further afield, the compelling French film Last Summer , directed by Catherine Breillat, which arrives in American theaters this month, is about a fifty-something married lawyer who has an affair with her teenage stepson. As the plot progresses, audiences are increasingly asked to interrogate the sexual dynamics at play through a #MeToo lens.

One noteworthy distinction here is that these relationships are not fodder for cheap laughs. Drama, yes. But not a punchline—or a pity party. And this attitude is extending beyond the screen: A recent revival of Sunset Boulevard in London cast the glamorous and powerful Nicole Scherzinger, 45, as Norma Desmond, a role that has long defined the pitiful aging woman grasping desperately at her lost youth. In this case, however, director Jamie Lloyd told The New York Times , he was specifically looking for an actress “in her prime.”

So what accounts for this flipping of the age ratio?

Entrepreneur and former ad executive, Cindy Gallop , whose viral 2009 TEDTalk “Make Love Not Porn” opened with the line “I date younger men,” believes it’s a reflection of who is making these films. “The onscreen narratives we’re seeing now come from books and scripts by women, and are being helmed by women, and backed and driven by women.”

.css-1aear8u:before{margin:0 auto 0.9375rem;width:34px;height:25px;content:'';display:block;background-repeat:no-repeat;}.loaded .css-1aear8u:before{background-image:url(/_assets/design-tokens/elle/static/images/quote.fddce92.svg);} .css-curasl{margin:0rem;font-size:1.625rem;line-height:1.2;font-family:SaolDisplay,SaolDisplay-fallback,SaolDisplay-roboto,SaolDisplay-local,Georgia,Times,serif;margin-bottom:0.3125rem;font-weight:normal;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.125rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.125rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.25rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-curasl em,.css-curasl i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;}.css-curasl b,.css-curasl strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-curasl i,.css-curasl em{font-style:italic;} We know that older women are just as attractive to younger men, as older men are attractive to younger women, no matter how threatening the patriarchy finds that.”

And like anyone else, women want to see both their realities and fantasies reflected in the world. Culture, meanwhile, is struggling to keep up with how women actually live. We know from studies that single women without children report being happier, and yet we see few storylines that reflect the possibility of satisfaction outside of partnership or parenthood. Similarly, women are increasingly earning more, and thanks to access to better healthcare and nutrition and exercise many of us are remaining physically healthy for longer (as every celebrity website loves to point out). Why wouldn’t we be considered attractive to literally everyone?

Says Gallop: “We know that older women are just as attractive to younger men, as older men are attractive to younger women, no matter how threatening the patriarchy finds that.”

In some ways, these storylines feel long overdue. A small but necessary counterbalance to the so-called “ trad wife ” movement that has become increasingly popular on social media.

And yet, it’s worth noting we’ve been here before. As new as these pairings might seem, they are just the latest iteration. In 1996 Terry McMillan published How Stella Got Her Groove Back about Stella, a successful 42-year-old woman who flies to an island for vacation and falls for a 21-year-old, whom she eventually ends up marrying. In the movie, Stella is played by Angela Bassett and the younger man by Taye Diggs. And let us not forget Sex and the City ’s Samantha Jones and Smith Jerrod.

In fact, if anything, this latest round feels tame—at least on screen. In The Idea of You, Hayes’ age has been upped from 20 to 26. Hathaway, meanwhile, could pass for a 30-year-old. The sex scenes onscreen are extremely mild compared to what’s described in the novel. Similarly, in A Family Affair , Kidman not only looks young, but she behaves like a woman half her age—giggling and insecure—and even then it begs the audience to believe that someone as accomplished as we’re told her character is would find anything in common with Efron’s, who behaves like an incompetent five year old. Abs are nice, but not that nice.

It leaves one craving something closer to what many of us are experiencing: The power and confidence of aging, with or without the youthful body to match. That’s something we all should be attracted to.

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‘A Family Affair’ Review: Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman’s Hollywood-Set Rom-Com Has No Heat

With a puzzlingly uncinematic look and clumsily paced relationship beats, Richard LaGravenese’s dull Netflix offering fizzles.

By Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly

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What sets off Zara’s downward spiral is her job resignation, and the spontaneous romance that sparks between Chris and Brooke — the former, a lonely man worshipped but not understood by millions, the latter, jadedly single since the death of Zara’s dad more than a decade ago. Seemingly acting out of protective instincts for her mother — after all, she’s seen what a despicable womanizer Chris can be — Zara complains constantly that her mom is dating her ex-boss, dismissing both Brooke and Genie in their respective needs from her. Brooke thankfully finds the encouragement she doesn’t get from her daughter through a lovely relationship with her legendary editor Leila (Kathy Bates, effortlessly grounding the film), who also happens to be her mother-in-law.

In charting the growing closeness of Chris and Brooke, LaGravenese’s direction is oddly rigid and dull. Across the magical studio lots they stroll through and the private meals they have away from prying eyes, you almost beg the film to loosen up a little and let the beautiful leads organically relax into its rhythm. Instead, “A Family Affair” insists on staccato beats and synthetic visuals. It’s surprising that famed Robert Zemeckis collaborator Don Burgess is behind the film’s shallow, one-note cinematography. Indeed, “A Family Affair” looks so lifeless that you wonder whether it’s being purposely uncinematic, out to fulfill the prophecy of the catch-all phrase “content.”

The production design also leaves a lot to be desired: While Brooke’s idyllic home (the cryptic location of which so doesn’t look like L.A., by the way) is supposed to give off a lived-in Nancy Myers vibe with its fancy kitchen and serenely furnished living spaces, it looks like a showroom at best. Same goes for the Hallmark-card mountain lodge where the film’s main quartet spends Christmas. You’ve probably seen sitcoms with more authentic interiors.

In the end, everything falls into place much as one would expect. Friendships are restored (though poor Genie still gets the short end of the stick), love finds a way, and careers take off. Some of the film’s inside-baseball jokes about a town obsessed with soulless sequels and multiverses fortunately land. But the biggest joke seems to be on “A Family Affair” itself, for wasting Efron’s underrated talents and Kidman’s peerless range so clumsily.

Reviewed online, June 26, 2024. Running time: 111 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Roth/Kirschenbaum Films production. Producers: Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum. Executive producers: Alyssa Altman, Michelle Morrissey, Carrie Solomon.
• Crew: Director: Richard LaGravenese. Screenplay: Carrie Solomon. Camera: Don Burgess. Editor: Melissa Bretherton. Music: Siddhartha Khosla.
• With: Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King, Liza Koshy, Kathy Bates.

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One man's world turns upside-down. One man's world turns upside-down. One man's world turns upside-down.

• Romane Simon
• Shawmus Sargent
• Raghuram Shetty
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• Lester Speight

• Al Sharpton

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• Eli Jackson

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• November 11, 2024 (United States)
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