Holiday Histrionics

Well, it's almost time for the Holidays! The one time of year that most of us look forward to, even though it painfully exposes the best and worst of all of us in the microcosm of our closest relationships.

Home For The Holidays is one of those rare movies that captures both the humor and pathos of our most revealing foibles. Like a combination of a heartbreakingly realistic novel by Anne Tyler, with the hysteria of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, this film should be a holiday classic. Unlike the idyllic I'ts a Wonderful Life, this film cuts close to the bone.

Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) finds out, just days before she is flying home to Baltimore from Chicago for Thanksgiving, that she has been fired from her job. At the same time, her 16 year old daughter reveals that she plans to lose her virginity while her mother is away. This is only the beginning of Claudia's problems.

Upon arrival in Baltimore, Claudia is greeted by her well meaning, but out of touch parents. Her zany gay brother Tommy (Robert Downey Jr.) also shows up with a new boyfriend, (Dylan Mc Dermott) who is tantalizingly gorgeous. However, the real fun begins when the Larson's assemble for Thanksgiving dinner, with Claudia's fragile, longsuffering spinster Aunt Gladys, (Geraldine Chaplin) and perfectionist martyr sister Joanne. The dinner is a complete riot, with 40 year old secret romantic revelations, flying turkeys, and slapstick humor bordering on the sublime.

A wonderful performance is delivered by Holly Hunter as family peacekeeper, as Tommy and Joanne mercilessly snipe at one another. An after dinner fight breaks out over a touch football game, that sends Joanne and family running from their parent's home, with Dad (Charles Durning) cursing the prospect of going through the turmoil again at Christmas. Robert Downey Jr. plays his part almost a little too well (one has to wonder whether he was on drugs at the time) due to his "over the edge" performance. Geraldine Chaplin is simply marvelous as the tenderly vulnerable Aunt Gladdy.

Despite the fact that the movie is mostly about personal interactions, it moves along at a measured pace, with exceptional comic timing, as each sequence of scenes is introduced with subheading, like chapters in a book. This is a clever directorial trick, borrowed from Woody Allen, by Jodie Foster, in this fine effort.

However, the true value of this film is in it's true to life depiction of the joys and tribulations of trying to relate, in a meaningful way, to those to whom we are inseparably bound, warts and all. The clear message is that, despite the dysfunction that is present in all families to some degree, we always come back for more, each year during the holidays. Not because we are gluttons for punishment, but because we realize that pleasure and pain are always two sides of the same coin.