Home for the Holidays is the 1995 comedy-drama that was a directorial triumph for Oscar winner Jodie Foster as well as her hand-picked cast.
This brilliant examination of family dysfunction during the holidays, based on a short story by Chris Radant and expanded into a screenplay by W D Richter, stars Oscar winner Holly Hunter as Claudia, an art gallery employee and would-be artist who gets fired and learns that her daughter is about to lose her virginity before flying home for Thanksgiving. The film then does a precise and efficient overlay of all those inane little things that drives adults insane when they go home for the holidays.
Topics broached in this film have been broached in past films, but the fact that Foster and Richter chose to set this film during Thanksgiving instead of during Christmas gives the film a layer of originality that sets it apart from similar cinematic fare. We see Claudia deal with the obnoxious woman sitting on the plane next to her, her mother complaining about her physical appearance, being forced into kitchen duty, playing referee between her brother and sister, struggling to find a private moment to have a secret cigarette, and clinging for dear life to the only relative she actually can tolerate, her little brother Tommy, to help get her through this ordeal.
Charles Durning and Anne Bancroft are an absolute joy as Claudia's parents, two people who have been together for so long that they have conversations without actual dialogue and love their children to death. The fact that neither actor is no longer with us makes their screentime all the more moving. Hunter has a couple of lovely scenes with each actor separately that, in the right mood, could ignite a tear duct.
Cynthia Stevenson was given the role of her career and ran with it as Joanne, Claudia's icy, emotionally detached, and slightly homophobic sister, despite the fact that her brother Tommy is gay. Stevenson imbues her unsympathetic character with an energy that evokes equal parts laughs and hisses. Steve Guttenberg is a great match for her as her tight-ass husband Walter, who hates his wife's family, especially her brother Tommy, with a white hot passion.
Robert Downey Jr. pretty much steals the movie as Tommy, the bombastic and crazy gay brother who is the only relative Claudia really likes. Downey Jr. is rolling on the floor funny here and makes every moment he has onscreen count, no matter who he's doing a scene with. Downey Jr. was at the height of his drug addiction during the filming of this movie and an actual intervention was staged at some point during production, but none of this shows onscreen...Robert Downey Jr.'s performance is the thing you will walk away from this movie remembering. Mention should also be made of Dylan McDermott as a friend Tommy brings home for Claudia and David Straithairn as an old high school classmate of Claudia's who was madly in love with her. Not to mention Geraldine Chaplin as Claudia's eccentric aunt who has, among other issues, a problem with uncontrollable flatulence.
Richter's screenplay hits all the right notes and Foster's direction is breezy yet sensitive. For anyone out there who ever wondered if they were secretly adopted and it was kept from them by their parents, this is the movie for you.
Last edited by Gideon58; 07-09-16 at 05:06 PM.