There's a part in the movie when a brother and his brother-in-law are in a physical fight on the front lawn and the father breaks it up by spraying them with the hose. When he notices the neighbors are looking at them, he shouts, "Go back to your own holidays!"
The movie, which centers around a Thanksgiving family reunion going horribly wrong, is not a comedy or a drama. Like a handful of family reunions, it does not have a lot of those genres, and is high on the insanity level that is relatable. Roger Ebert asked, "Have we not all, on our ways to family gatherings, parked the car a block away, taken several deep breaths, rubbed our eyes and massaged our temples, and driven on, gritting our teeth? That is not because we do not love our families, but because we know them so very, very well."
We get that feeling at the beginning as Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) finds out that she has been fired from her job at a Chicago art museum, and responds by kissing her boss (Austin Pendleton). She's already preparing for the disaster ahead. Claudia is taken to the airport by her daughter Kitt (Claire Danes), who tells her that she "might" be sleeping with her boyfriend for the first time ever on the weekend. On Claudia's end, she's met by her parents, Adele and Henry, played by Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning. Henry's recording a video, Adele has brought an extra winter coat in case Claudia misplaced hers (she has).
The Larson family home is like a historic home. Ebert noted, "It has been furnished with dozens if not thousands of the sorts of objects found in mail-order gift catalogs. Not expensive catalogs, but the kinds of catalogs with 16 gifts on each page, each one a "miniature" of something you would not possibly want the full-size version of, such as a reindeer or a barbershop quartet."
Henry is a retired airport maintenance man. Adele chain-smokes all the time and is able to tell what is going on in Claudia's life. ("Mom, I'm thinking of a change...I may not be at the museum all that much longer." "They fired you!") Along comes Claudia's gay brother Tommy (Robert Downey Jr) who has brought a new friend named Leo Fish (Dylan McDermott). The parents appear to accept the fact that their son is gay without acknowledging it, which appears to be right in many households. Claudia is wondering what has happened to Tommy's former boyfriend, played by Sam Slovick, who has popular with the entire family.
Next arrives Claudia's sister Joanne (Cynthia Stevenson) and brother-in-law Walter (Steve Guttenberg). Walter hates Tommy, Tommy hates Walter or Joanne, and shows this by throwing a turkey on her lap without looking like he meant to.
Everything is usual family issues compared with the arrival of Aunt Glady, played by Geraldine Chaplin, who is really insane in her own way of passionate eccentriciy, and has had a crush on Henry ever since she first saw him (he appeared, as she remembers, like a horse in a uniform).
What is accurate about "Home for the Holidays" is that every character does not act like they are going through any of this for the first time. Even when Aunt Glady drinks heavily and admits that Henry kissed her the first time they met, the response is just dead silence. We get the feeling she admits this so many times over the course of the year.
Foster directs the film with the accuracy of revealing every single moments. She knows that even though Holly Hunter's character gives the movie's central view, it is up to Durning and Bancroft to give the center - just as parends to at real family gatherings. Ebert noted, "Bancroft and Durning have each been guilty, from time to time, of overacting, but here they both beautifully find just the right notes of acceptance, resignation, wounded but stubborn pride - and romance. There are moments when they dance together that help to explain why families do get together for the holidays, and Durning describes a memory of one perfect moment in the family's history, and we understand that although life may not give us too much, it often gives enough."
With Tommy, the gay brother, he gives a counterpart to the shear insanity. Foster and her writer, W.D. Richter, do not make a single mishap of making his character be about homosexuality. Ebert mentioned, "He is gay, but what defines him for the family is more his quasi-obnoxious personality, his way of picking on his boring brother-in-law, his practical jokes, his wounding insights, and finally his own concealed romanticism. Downey brings out all the complexities of a character who has used a quick wit to keep the world's hurts at arm's length." When he brings his friend, the mysterious Leo Fish, he has made a surprise that no one, even Claudia, was expecting.
Ebert credited, "Holly Hunter is a wonderful actress. Here she has a more human and three-dimensional role than in her other current movie, "Copycat," but her performance in "Copycat" is even better, maybe because it stands alone, and in "Home for the Holidays," she reacts and witnesses as much as she initiates. It's not hard to guess that with her stature and presence she represents, to some degree, Jodie Foster." It appears as if there is some real-life stories spread out in the film throughout the cast, but that's not the point: What Foster and Ricter have made here is a film that understands the reality told by Robert Frost when he wrote, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
If you haven't seen this film, make it a tradition to see this every year. This movie will bring about the realism for those who have gone through family reunions. I still live at home, so I don't go through this at all, but when that time comes, I will be able to relate to this movie.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Look out tomorrow for the finale of "Jim Carrey not in Sequels" month.
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