good back-story, and good acting

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I can't stand the character of Tommy in this movie. He is just a total a*****e. This dislike of him has nothing to do with the fact that Tommy is gay (I am male but I am not gay by the way). He treats everyone like s**t! The mean spirited things he says about the down-on-his-luck character portrayed by David Strathairn is just so extremely cruel and heartless! Tommy is just a very selfish, cruel, immature bastard! All he cares about is himself and as far as he is concerned everyone else can go to hell. Claudia tries to be kind to him but he is even cruel to her. He tells her to get in his car and then repeatedly screeches away from her leaving her on the sidewalk. Also, he intrudes on her in a very disrespectful, infantile way when she is showering, what a piece of s**t he is! To paraphrase Joanne: "Even if I just met him on the street and he gave me his phone number...I'd throw it away"! I wouldn't want to have anything to do with this reject! All the way through the movie I just want to punch his lights out! What an ass!! I believe that the proper term for a person who behaves in this manner is that he is a narcissist, and in the worst possible way!

I really didn't like this film at all. I wanted to see a warmhearted family Thanksgiving film and boy, was I disappointed! This family was filled with a bunch of ridiculous stereotypes who tried too hard to be "quirky" and just ended up being annoying. There didn't seem to be any love between the family members whatsoever, except for maybe one or two touching scenes between the father and the daughter, who was played by an unappealing Holly Hunter. And speaking of unappealing, it was painfully obvious that Robert Downey, Jr. was a drug addict during the filming of this movie because he was a crazed maniac during most of the film, treating everyone with complete disrespect that was supposed to be "cute" and "funny". Ugh. I'm SO glad that I don't have a family like the one portrayed in this film. In my family, we actually like one another as well as love one another and our holiday gatherings are filled with fun and laughter, not mindless, petty bickering and picking on each other like jealous children. The only reason I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 is because Dylan McDermott was very handsome and pleasant to look at. He and the dad were the only likable characters in the film. The best part of the entire movie was the montage of memories shown in the last few minutes. Other than that, it was a hot mess.

Woman goes home for holiday, meets irritating relatives and finds a bloke. It's two hours of your life that you will wish you had spent being tasered. So, the set-up, woman (Hunter) is fired, her daughter is about to have sex with her boyfriend but going home for a holiday dinner still beckons. Gathering is a variety of characters all of which have something annoying to say from the obsessively wacky brother (Downey Junior ..why he isn't covered in bruises from casual passers-by hitting him seems to be a hole in the plot) to the obsessively dull brother (Guttenberg). The mother (Bancroft) seems to be the source of the wackiness and the father (Durning) the source of obsession. A thanksgiving dinner ensues with nobody seeming to pay attention to anyone else so self-obsessed are they all and an 'absolutely hilarious' scene with the turkey. Oh yes, enter handsome stranger. Other things happen but frankly I won't bore you with them. The film is peppered with good actors all of whom seem to fail so I would guess that the main fault is in the story and direction of it. Hollie Hunter is someone who I have liked as an actress for many years but am beginning to revise my opinion. There is not much good to say about this film except the fact that the characters were realistic ... so much so that you wanted to stick then with a fork instead of the Turkey. It is based on a short story and the only positive thing I have to say is to thank the lord the author didn't write the full version.

Take two hip, sophisticated siblings from their creative lives in the city and send them home to their family in the suburbs. Make sure they spend their entire visit letting everyone know how superior they are to the ones left behind. This can be done through eye rolls, snide remarks, snickers and mean spirited comments.While it's true the home town folk were sometimes odd, self-centered, grudge carrying, or shallow, none of them deserved to be treated like dirt beneath the two protagonist's feet.Not funny, and lacking any of the warmth we might expect from holiday movies.