REVIEW: 'The Family Man' fails to learn the moral lessons that might have made it a wonderful life on film

"The Family Man," which is now playing on Hulu, is a novel, promising take on the premise of "It's a Wonderful Life" on paper. 

But it ends up being a shallow film that somehow neuters it title character into valuing domesticity more than anything else while in the process choking the range of performances by its supporting cast.

Immediately distasteful about the film is a scene in a grocery store across the street from the building where Jack Campbell works. A cashier with a heavy Chinese accent and a flamboyantly urban customer (Don Cheadle) claiming to have won the lottery get into an argument about the validity of his ticket that ends with the brandishing of gun.

As possible as it is to walk into a convenience store with these kind of characters, Hollywood in this instance overcompensates for its lack of real-life perspective, designing a scene that could have worked without the perpetuation of racial stereotypes used to introduce Cheadle's character and show that Jack might be a driven businessman, but honorable when it counts the most. 

Then toward the end of the film is a similar scene that for some reason attempts to point out the triviality of racism, which is a noble message, but awkwardly placed in a story that has sparing to do with social progression.

Even more stereotypical is the noticeably messy suburban home, minivan, wife dancing naked in the shower to a song included in the film's soundtrack, two kids, dog and football-loving friends Jack wakes up had he not left indefinitely for London 13 years ago and stayed behind with his college girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni) to play house. It, of course, takes Jack 50 minutes into the film to realize this is why he is no longer a wealthy Wall Street magnate.

Either the responsible screenwriter of the film has no connection with the real world at all or the studio created a very ideal American setting that would appeal to moviegoers in the U.S. and abroad.  

Perhaps the too formulaic premise of the film is what ultimately makes it a disappointing film when compared to "It's a Wonderful Life," which is about an all around good man who doubts his own personal worth in the world. Most of the classic film is spent showing George Bailey come of age and get into the predicament that causes the character to consider suicide, convincing the audience that he is OK enough not to want him to jump off that bridge.

Naturally the reversed premise of "The Family Man" is about an all around flawed, ruthless businessman who takes too much pride in his professional success, going so far as provoking a quasi angel to show him anything lacking from his life. But instead of showing Jack as a man worth saving, he is portrayed in a large part of the film as very selfish, ambitious and only moderately content with the life with Kate the character could have had.

While flawed characters are more interesting than highly moral ones to explore in a story, Jack does not go through anything particularly enlightening to convince him that the road most traveled is the one better-suited for him. It just kind of happens in one scene in which Jack plays with his daughter during a picturesque snowfall.

So that the moral of the story is not that life is worth living, but rather that suburbia is a more altruistically pleasant way to live as opposed to being one of the many unhappy, cut throat Wall Street movers and shakers. And that is a gross Hollywood oversimplification if ever there was one.

Cage is well-suited for the role of Jack Campbell in that he is able to complement it with his characteristic freak-outs at how everything is suddenly different, but delivers only an adequate performance when it becomes necessary for the character to win back the life with which he presumably falls in love.

As for Leoni, she is left with nothing to do with her character but act as Jack's always sympathetically tolerant punching bag.

Cheadle, who is usually a great actor, portrays an even more limited character, who is partly a narrator and later the enforcer of the absurdly strict rules of the magic realism, of all things, that make the story possible.

Not as magical as it is meant to be, "The Family Man" is simply an interesting, but meaningless sequence of events that needlessly takes more than two hours to present on the silver screen. It is recommended for anyone who has a lot of time to kill and access to a high speed Internet connection.

WATCH ON HULU!

Popcorn rating:

(3 out of 5 pieces)