癲狂院 Vixen Owl Cigar..。o○

WHAT IF YOU GOT A SECOND CHANCE???


But can I Just Keep the Ferrari???
Examine the what if.
What if that oh so important decision that made your life had not happened?
What if you had done things different?
Took a different road?
Well, Jack Campbell gets a chance to see a glimpse of what could have been, one Christmas Eve, 13 years after leaving his girlfriend at the airport for a year in London, he goes to bed alone and wakes up to another life.
He has entered Jack's what-if life.

Screwing around with the human memory has really been "the thing to do " lately.
Only in the rarest case is this concept ever attached to a warm, funny story.

Fortunately for us, The Family Man is.
The way I felt leaving the theater after seeing this movie , that's exactly the kind of feeling that made me start going there more often.
An extremely simple, bare-bones story is the biggest reason Family Man works.
Much like It's A Wonderful Life, Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) is given a "glimpse " of what his life might have been but for one decision, which we see him make at the beginning of the movie.
He and his girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni) are standing at the airport, and he is on the verge of going to London to become one of the richest, baddest dudes alive.
She asks him not to do it, to "flush the plan " and stay with her.

【Tia Leoni】Family Man【Nicolas Cage】
It's A Wonderful Life 2000: DJ Brett Ratner Club Remix
Nicholas Cage is Jack Campbell, a hard-driving Wall Street executive who jokes about working late on Christmas Eve and thinks nothing of calling an emergency strategy session for noon on Christmas Day.
A chance encounter with a mysterious gun-wielding man, Cash (played by Don Cheadle ) gives Jack the unbidden opportunity to experience what his life would have been like if he had married his college sweetheart, Kate Reynolds, instead of becoming a Wall Street tycoon.

Hmmm... sounds familiar...
This movie clearly parallels It's a Wonderful Life in that the protagonist sees how the world would have been different without him.
At least we know clearly that Clarence the Angel and his superiors are responsible for what happens to George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life.
Although Jack's mysterious Cash is never clearly identified, I dubbed him "Fate " -- as in the movie's trailer ... when fate stepped in on Christmas Eve.

Ah, The Material Pleasures in Life
Jack experiences what life would have been like if "Jack the Wall Street tycoon " had never existed and "Jack the family man " had evolved instead.
We experience Jack's frustration as he realizes that everyone who knew (and sucked up to ) him no longer recognizes him and even threatens him with the police.
Upon waking as Jack Campbell, family man, his first reaction is to go look for his Ferrari.
Then he goes to his apartment and office -- trying to validate all the material trappings by which he had previously measured his life.
It's clearly evident that material things are most important to Jack Campbell at that point in his life.

DVD Extras
Spotlight on Location: You know what these are all about, cast interviews, the making of the movie and so on.
There is a marvelous commentary with the director Brett Ratner and the two writers David Diamond and David Weissman.
There is the music video to Seal's underrated gem "This Could Be Heaven ".
Also there are outtakes and some gr8 deleted scenes.

One of my favorite deleted scenes that I really think should've been left in the movie was one near the end in which Rich Jack, after having seen the "glimpse ", returns to see his would-have-been friend Arnie.
Of course the guy doesn't know him, and Jack says something like "I think we could've been friends. " then Arnie's eyes light up and he says "Oh, Jack Campbell! We went to high school together!! "
If you like Memento, 50 First Dates, The Butterfly Effect, or Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind then my bet is that you'll this one.

I thought the ending was good but could have been better, it left me hanging.
What happens next? Where are the kids?
Will they have children? Will they be the same children or different ones?
I wanted the kids to be in the ending.
That would have made it perfect.
Overall the movie was gr8, Nicholas Cage plays a great confused and astounded character.
He was perfect for this part.
This is one movie that I will watch again.

The supporting cast (which contains a number of new faces) is helpful, especially German-born Sommer, Cheadle, and Paul Sorvino, who all turn in doubly and beautifully deceptive performances.
The photography of Dante Spinotti (LA CONFIDENTIAL, WONDER BOYS ) catches the Christmastide snowy scapes of both Wall Street and New Jersey.
Danny Elfman's musical score is
The kids are adorable, and -- oh, yes -- there's a Big Dog.
Compared to the giddy chutzpah of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and the flattened farce of MEET THE PARENTS, THE FAMILY MAN is a comic masterpiece, about a man trying to become a father and a husband, in roughly that order. (I wonder if, like the first two, it will gross a hundred million or more? )
Although the last two minutes of the action finesses the movie's philosophical bonafides...

What the hell -- it's Christmas!!!!! I'm giving the film FIVE STARS.