The Family Man (2000)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

People are voting emotionally.

Excellent but underrated film

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

In The Family Man, Nicolas Cage stars as Jack Campbell, aW all Street takeover artist, sleek, cold-eyed, hard-hearted. In a prologue set 13 years earlier we see a different Jack: jeans, leather jacket, rumpled hair. Saying goodbye to his girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni) in an airport. She pleads with him not to take this internship in London, that it will mean the end of their relationship.Forward to present time, we see that Kate was right. When Jack gets a message from his secretary that someone named Kate called, he tosses the slip disdainfully aside. That's ancient history, and Jack Campbell never looks back. Instead, he keeps everyone working late Christmas Eve on their latest billion-dollar merger and orders them all back tomorrow.The Family Man does offer some decent entertainment but in the end is all to predictable and not as touching or romantic as some claim. Not bad but perhaps a bit too far fetched, silly and over the top. Good performances from both leads isn't quite enough from making this film really enjoyable.

There's really not much to say. One more in endless line of Hollywood Christmas manipulations of audience emotions. Neither idea nor realization are original or impressive. Movie has depth and message, but it's seen so many times before that it stopped to be interesting long time ago. As much as I love Cage, I must say that he mostly makes mediocre movies far below his level. Beside Leaving Las Vegas, City of Angels and Gone in 60 Seconds, I really can not recall anything else that is even slightly above average.6/10

The very feel this movie gives you is just something I think is a matter of past sadly, newer movies just seem to trivialize important topics as one presented in the movie, and aren't quite capable of treating them with so much beauty. I really miss movies like this, I cant actually define what it is they have, but I think it has something to do with times they were made in, 1990s and early 2000s had so much more optimism and happiness in them, and I think movies from that era absorbed spirit of those times. Eventually The Family man will leave you wondering what is it you value the most in your life. Also, its not the kind of movie that you will forget completely after some time. Honestly, it deserves an 8 (better than average), but I give it a 10, its current rating does it no justice.

The movie promotes the good old American values: have a family, work hard, be rich and happy. It also provides two dilemmas: do you live in a boring suburb (New Jersey), or live in the city where everything is happening (New York city)? Do you live with kids with no money and collect coupons or do you live the life of a bachelor and be rich and classy? Do you have to be lonely in NYC not having anyone near you at Christmas, or do you live with your wife and family? Do your kids have to live miserably in the city or do you have make sacrifices and live a boring life in a small town? However, these are false dilemmas. One doesn't always need to choose one to sacrifice the other. Why not live in another city, not as crowded as NYC? Why not have a job, that does not pay as much as a Wall Street job, but one that you can live OK and don't have to work 24 hours? Then you don't drive a Ferrari, but you also don't drive an almost broken minivan. Why do the characters either have to be 1) egoist self-centered assholes who only want luxury or 2) parents who have no ambition and live a dull life? Overall, it is a good idea (make a decision, live with it, then years later suddenly live in an alternative life if the different would have been different, reflect). However, the false dilemmas make it an unsuccessful film.