I usually pick movies with actors I find interesting and I have to say I certainly find Nicolas Cage very interesting indeed (yum!) but apart from the obvious reason for liking him I also find he is a very good actor and one of my favourite movies which he stars in has to be ConAir.

But enough of my ranting and on to the movie review at hand and that’s

The Family Man.

Nicholas Cage plays a rich man with an excellent job as a Wall Street banker, lovely fast car, fabulous apartment, great clothes from the best stores and life is looking rosy for him until one day he gets a phone call. His secretary asks who the lady in question is and he says it’s just someone from his past and his philosophy is “ The best place for the past is the past”!

But what if you had chosen a different path? Everyone has thought that at some time in their life, I know I have but there’s no point dwelling on these things is there!

Well Jack Cambell (Nicolas Cage) is soon to realise that his life could have been a whole lot different is he hadn’t walked out on his old girlfriend 10 years ago.

After leaving work late one night he drops into a store to buy some eggnog (or a bottle of plonk of some sort) and it faced with a rather nasty customer who is waving a gun around – this man wants to cash in a lottery ticket worth a few hundred dollars, only the assistant doesn’t believe it’s a genuine ticket. This guy gets really p*ssed off about this and starts waving a gun around and Jack offers to buy the ticket for a few quid less than its worth and says it’s a good business deal. The highly strung guy agrees to this and they leave the store to exchange ticket and money. While they are outside Jack tries to get the guy to search for help and says “everyone needs something”. When he is asked by gun boy what it is he needs he just says he has everything he needs and doesn’t need a thing!

That’s when everything goes pear shaped!
He wakes up on Christmas morning with a wife (Tea Leoni) and 2 kids!
Yes you can imagine his surprise, he frantically leaves the house to look for his posh car only to be faced with a rather battered family car - his fabulous penthouse apartment is now a plain old house out of town and his care free bachelor days have ended over night.
He is not a happy bunny and goes to his place of work where he should be one of the top bananas but instead his name has been removed and no-one knows who he is. He then discovers that he now works in the tyre business, in fact he basically sells tyres.

He has to adjust to being a Dad and a husband and that’s no easy task, all he wants is to fall asleep and wake up to his old life, full of all the luxuries he’s used to. After a while though things start to get better and he doesn’t know whether he prefers this life or his old one!


~~~~~ What I Thought Of It ~~~~~


I don’t want to tell you anymore about the movie as I feel it would spoil the movie for you but I would like to add that I found this to be a very entertaining and at times rather funny film. Nicolas Cage is outstanding as ever and Tea Leoni plays her part well too. No hammyness to be had and no time filling moments either. Just a good plot and some good actor’s which makes a recipe for a fab movie in my opinion. I think this is classed as a comedy in Blockbuster’s but I didn’t really find that to be so – yes there are some funny bits but not as many as I would expect from a comedy. It is a bit slushy though and I do like a bit of slush, lol. Ciao has this in the romance section and I think that’s probably more like it. So if your not sure whether to rent this or not I would strongly recommend it. Its not too slushy as to put some men off and it’s got a really good plot. It will fill a few hours on a rainy day or night.

~~~~ Running Time ~~~~

125 minutes

~~~~ Cast ~~~~

Nicolas Cage
Tea Leoni
Don Cheadle
Jeremy Piven
Saul Rubinek
Josef Sommer

~~~~ Director ~~~~

Brett Ratner








Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day