One of my all-time favorite movies is No. 9 in Dish Dish‘s countdown of the best Christmas films: The Family Man.
The 2000 movie stars Nicolas Cage (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) doing what he does best — comedy. Cage plays a successful investment broker with a Ferrari, a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and on the brink of a multi-million-dollar merger on Christmas Eve. In short, he thinks he has the perfect life.
But, in a Christmas Carol-type move, Cage meets a man (Don Cheadle of Iron Man 2) holding up a convenience store and his life is changed — literally. When he wakes up the next morning, he’s in a house in New Jersey with a wife (Tea Leoni, Ghost Town), two kids, a minivan parked in the driveway and a job as a tire salesman. It’s a “glimpse,” Cheadle tells Cage, of the life he could have had — Leoni is an old girlfriend, the one he let get away, and over the next year, Christmas to Christmas, Cage learns how good life could have been.
The Family Man has it all, adorable kids (daughter Makenzie Vega thinks he’s an alien and says “Welcome to Earf”), plenty of laughs (baby son Ryan or Jake Milkovich pees on Cage as he tries to change the diaper) and lots of lots of heart, which is what we love in our Christmas movies. Not to mention some beautiful scenes of falling snow. Aaawww!
The PG-13-rated movie also stars Jeremy Piven (TV’s Entourage), Saul Rubinek (TV’s Warehouse 13) and Amber Valletta (Gamer). It grossed a tide $75.7 million when it ran in theaters.
The Family Man is on DVD
Check out the rest of the Disc Dish Christmas Movie Advent Calendar.
Leave a Reply