December 21–28, 2000

movie shorts

The Family Man

by Cindy Fuchs

"Probably gonna wanna buckle up, Jack." With this warning, a Ferrari-driving angel named Cash (Don Cheadle) announces the reeducation of Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage), which takes up the bulk of Brett Ratner’s often (surprisingly) watchable collision of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. Granted, the sentiments are stale and the conclusion foregone, when Jack wakes up one morning to find that his powerhouse-Wall Street-bachelor’s lifestyle has been replaced by domestic chaos in suburban New Jersey, where he’s suddenly husband for 13 years to the sweetheart he dumped long ago (Téa Leoni) and father to two adorable kids. The film lays on the rube-ness of his other life a little thick: Jack sells tires for his yee-haw father-in-law (Harve Presnell), bowls with his Bedrock-denizenish buddies, and has trouble changing a diaper (he — and you — must endure the obligatory wee-wee-in-the-face scene). Thank god for the requisite precocious six-year-old (Makenzie Vega), who alone sees that her dad has been kidnapped and replaced by a space alien (she is actually pretty cute), not to mention Cash (here standing in for Whoopi Goldberg), the magnanimous black helpmeet come to earth to help the white folks sort out their issues.