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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 1027
Released: July 17, 2001 |
| Our Price: $4.73 |
| Used Price: $1.99 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
High-powered Wall Street bachelor Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) gets the shock of a lifetime when he wakes up one morning in suburban New Jersey next to Kate (Téa Leoni) the girlfriend he left 13 years ago. Suddenly Jack's entire world is turned upside down. Can this once single-minded exec actually become The Family Man?System Requirements:Starring: Nicolas Cage Téa Leoni. Directed By: Brett Ratner. Running Time: 126 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2000 Universal Distribution Corp.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 025192094125 Manufacturer No: 61020941
Description of The Family Man:
Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) is the quintessential Wall Street shark, scoring killer deals by day and shallow escort sex by night. His round-the-clock routine of empty luxuries is disturbed one lonely Christmas Eve when a gun-packing punk (Don Cheadle)--perhaps an angel of mercy--responds to an altruistic gesture from Jack by giving him "a glimpse" of the life he could have had. Could have, that is, if he had married the girlfriend (Téa Leoni) he'd abandoned 13 years earlier, raised two adorable children, worked in his father-in-law's retail tire outlet, and lived happily ever after in suburban New Jersey. Thrust into this "glimpse" of the path not taken, Jack's a single-malt man in a lite-brew world, wondering if he'll ever return to his "better" life of callous wealth and solitude--or if he even wants to.
Carp all you want about this derivative premise, with its marginal stereotypes and biased embrace of domestic bliss and dirty diapers. The simple fact is, The Family Man works like a charm. Under the assured direction of Brett Ratner (Rush Hour), this holiday crowd-pleaser offers comedy and chemistry in equal measure, making the hilarity of Jack's predicament a smooth catalyst for that rarest of movie romances: the marital love story. Leoni is Cage's perfect match as Jack's idealized but imperfect wife, and the movie's appeal largely derives from its awareness that any life has its pleasures and pains. While it only flirts with the dark desperation that makes It's a Wonderful Life a classic predecessor, The Family Man is an irresistible what-if fantasy, and even its debatable ending rides on a wave of genuine warmth and sentiment. --Jeff Shannon
The Family Man Reviews:
comfort food, er, film... 
2009-12-09 - Instead of slopping on the pounds by eating tons of comfort food, when I'd like to cozy up to reassurance for life choices made, I'm glad for this flick. I compare it to having my mom read me my favorite bedtime story.
Massive dosage of love (aka pot) 
2009-12-09 - There are two aspects in the review. One is of love and another is of analysis, i.e. heart vs head.
The gist of the movie: No matter how powerful/rich you are, it is futile if you don't have a family. That the ultimate purpose of life lies in family and procreation.
Most of the movie can be considered a dream, so the movie itself may not portray unrealistic events (without which not many movies exist) as long as one considers that Cage goes into sleep and dreams the whole "family life" up, wakes up and finds a purpose in life.
I can think of few movies which made me more emotional. So on that aspect this movie is wonderful. The message is that no matter how many differences people may have their instincts always point towards procreation and finding the ultimate purpose in the process, in an otherwise purposeless life.
I do not agree with the preaching of family values against ambition in this movie. However I understand(a bit) how people as masses believe and behave I can not express anything but sympathetic love towards the short stint of existence which many seem to believe to be a blessing.
Love is the drug of these times of materialism (which I don't disapprove) and the movie serves well as a potent drug. As people are running out of problems/suffering such as hunger, infant mortality, disease and war, people, both as individuals and as a part of the society will begin asking questions about the purpose of their lives and at societal scale this may lead to decay(in numbers and/or economy). So it is nice to have movies that make people feel purposeful.
Where is the Blu-Ray version!!! We have been waiting forever for it!!!
2009-12-07 - This is one of my favorite movies especially around Christmas time. Nicholas Cage has his best performance in this movie in my opinion. I really hope we can see the blu-ray version soon!
A Revolting NORP Regurgitation 
2009-11-06 - Here, ultrahack Brett Ratner and the profoundly untalented screenwriting duo of David Diamond and David Weissman perform an inexplicable and boring magic trick by stretching a well-worn scenario that could barely suffice as a half-hour television show into the longest two hours and six minutes in the history of motion pictures. I often check the time counter of my DVD player once, maybe twice when viewing a movie; while watching this slogging, entirely uninspired dreck, I checked it over a dozen times, always bewildered by how little time had actually elapsed.
Nicolas Cage plays a successful Wall Street broker with no social life and, like every other character of this rancid story, nary a whit of personality, either. With the aid of sassy, magical, pistol-wielding Don Cheadle, he's transported to an alternate dimension in which he sells tires and is blessed with a loving family...the life he could have had if he hadn't gotten on THAT PLANE thirteen years ago! Christ, what a pristine concept! It's the life he could have had, but he doesn't realize how much better it is to have a family than an nine-figure bank account and investment assets out the wazoo until he experiences a succession of charmless, totally predictable incidents in the life of a godforsaken Jersey NORP.
This story's conflict of choice is utterly beyond me; why does Cage want to move back to NYC and start his career over with his surprise brood when he lives in a gigantic house beyond the means of all but the most prosperous middle-class families (it's cute when production designers who live in ivory towers try to depict the working-class household) and could simply quit his job and use what he knows to engage in insider trading without ever being caught? The performances are bland at best (Cage, Téa Leoni) and infuriating at worst: as always, Jeremy Piven is enragingly obnoxious, so annoying in his overacting that I'd thrill to see him thrown into rush hour traffic on the Long Island Expressway. Saddled with yet more ugly, blue-tinted photography, Ratner's direction would be rote if it weren't so calculatedly, pointlessly drawn - there's no depth here to convey; he's just dragging every scene out as long as he possibly can to satisfy studio expectations of a two-hour feature.
If you want to see almost everything that's wrong with American cinema, Ratner's filmography and this flavorless entry in particular are endemic of it. This is gutless, brainless, wholly derivative film making. It's bound to insult the intelligence of any viewer with a triple-digit IQ who makes the mistake of watching it. Consider yourself warned.
Incredible - Universal barely graced "Dune" with an adequate DVD edition the first time around, but this garbage was treated to all the trimmings. There are nine deleted scenes (as if this wasn't already three-fourths too long), a featurette that's probably handy if you're out of NyQuil and three (THREE, HOLY CHRIST) commentary tracks: one by Ratner, Diamond and Weissman that surely sounds like a great sucking noise, another from producer Marc Abraham that's about as fascinating as tax code literature and one more in which Danny Elfman discusses the movie's insipid, sleigh bell-tinged score, probably the worst he's ever composed. So Elfman couldn't have voiced a commentary track for "Beetlejuice" or "Batman?" He had to discuss a score that sounds as though he wrote it on a napkin or three during a conversation? If all this doesn't put you to sleep...there's also a Seal music video on this disc. Zzzzzz.
A new approach to the trading places theme
2009-10-05 - 4 of 5 stars for the romance movie The Family Man. This is a variation on the trading places theme. Rich, high-power Wall Street business man (Nicolas Cage) runs into a street character (Don Cheadle) who causes Cage's character to have lived a different path in his life. Cage awakens to find a wife and kids where he was single before. The wife turns out to be an old girlfriend; so this is the life-path where he marries her. Hard to know if it was all a dream or not. No real explaination of how he got moved into this alternate life-path nor how he eventually returned to his original path. No explaination of Cheadle's "powers" or role in all of this.
Nice relationship between Cage and his girlfriend/wife (Tea Leoni). Very believeable as a married couple with kids. A nicely made movie, good story, novel approach to the trading places theme. It is a fun and sweet movie worth watching.
