Home for the Holidays

I had a pretty dang good childhood and I have a great relationship with my parents and my siblings, I really don’t know how to get through life without them; this is why I cannot figure out why I love Home for the Holidays so much. This film is about a hugely dysfunctional family. Tommy & Claudia get along fabulously but Tommy’s still secretive, and neither of them gets along with their sister. All in all, this is a family that proves you can be blood and not know one another at all.

However, there is a heart behind this film that is sorely lacking in other dysfunctional family films. Granted, I just watched The Family Stone but that’s the first dysfunctional family film that pops to mind – everything that I think the characters and Stone family are missing in that film Jodie Foster was able to include in Home for the Holidays. There is a heart in this film that drives the story and in the end these characters are totally likeable and a much truer depiction of a real family and their problems.

Watching this film again I do genuinely think part of the reason I love it so much is the relationship between Claudia and Tommy. These siblings love one another in a way that I can relate to because I have a relationship like this with one of my brothers. At the beginning of the film Claudia is devastated by what’s happening in her life and grief-calls Tommy and leaves a message on his machine laying everything out and telling him she misses him and doesn’t know what she’s going to do without him coming home for Thanksgiving. In the middle of the night Tommy shows up claiming that he didn’t get Claudia’s message but that his sales job dropped him in the neighborhood so he decided to spend the holiday with them. Durring the climax of the film Tommy reveals that he did come home because of Claudia’s message and when their sister rips Tommy and his life style apart the scene in the kitchen when Claudia and Tommy console each other still moves me.

Like Drew Barrymore did with Whip It, Jodie Foster proves that actor/directors tend to have the ability to get phenomenal performances out of their actors. This is not a bubbly, light hearted film, but I do think it’s a film that should be watched and enjoyed.

Adele: I'm giving thanks that we don't have to go through this for another year. Except
we do, because those bastards went and put Christmas right in the middle, just to
punish us.