Along with fruitcake and Grandma's egg nog, \Pieces of April,"" starring Katie Holmes, is one of the things to avoid this holiday season.
Holmes portrays April, a misunderstood black-sheep figure living in New York City. Estranged from her family, April decides, because of her mother's bout with breast cancer, she should try to make amends by cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
Director Peter Hedges intertwines three stories to create the plot of the film. After waking Thanksgiving morning, April begins to prepare the turkey only to discover that the dilapidated oven in her dingy efficiency does not work. Refusing to let panic overwhelm her, Holmes beseeches her neighbors to let her use their ovens. By going door to door, April begins to meet her neighbors, who up until this time have been perfect strangers. However, this effort goes strangely awry as one of her deranged neighbors proceeds to hold her turkey hostage. April takes charge of the situation by calling the police to report a turkey-napping, but to no avail. Fortunately, neighboring Chinese immigrants, who do not speak English, intuitively sense her need for a working oven and allow her to use theirs once the elusive turkey has been recovered.
By sharing the story of Thanksgiving with the family, April herself begins to realize the true meaning of this holiday. As warm and fuzzy as these scenes are intended to be, Holmes overplays the role. The result is a strange blend of ""Dawson's Creek"" and Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, with a dash of after-school special thrown into the mix. Meanwhile, two other storylines are brewing.
April's boyfriend, played by Derek Luke, scours town for a decent suit to wear for dinner. The other storyline captures the journey April's parents and siblings take to the city in the family car. Perhaps the most intricate of the three plots, this storyline seeks to chronicle the deterioration of the mother's health while painting a portrait of a highly dysfunctional family. The ride is punctuated by stops at gas-station bathrooms in which the mother smokes pot, the father openly weeping and the siblings quibbling.
Although this film fails in plot and character structure, the performances turned in by the ailing mother (Patricia Clarkson) and tormented father (Oliver Platt) are among the few bright spots. The other is the usage of light within each shot. Scenes in April's apartment are shrouded in darkness, portraying her pain and sense of abandonment, while scenes seen from her mother's point of view are bathed in raking light, foreshadowing her journey into the afterlife.
A dud of a movie, at least ""Pieces of April"" does recall one important holiday lesson. Last week, as people passed the cranberry sauce and pretended they are not actually related to most of the people around the table, they should have been thankful: At least their oven works.
