home for the holidays

what the film does

claudia larson (holly hunter) loses her job at a chicago museum, kisses her ex-boss on the way out, and learns her teenage daughter plans to spend thanksgiving with her boyfriend. she flies to baltimore to endure the holiday at her parents’ house, where her mother adele (anne bancroft) nitpicks everything and her father henry (charles durning) watches from the sidelines. her brother tommy (robert downey jr.) shows up unannounced with a friend named leo (dylan mcdermott), who claudia assumes is his new boyfriend. tommy is actually still with his husband jack, and brought leo along hoping he would hit it off with claudia.

thanksgiving day unfolds in a cascade of small disasters: eccentric aunt gladys (geraldine chaplin) professes her love for henry, tommy drops the turkey on his conservative sister joanne (cynthia stevenson), joanne retaliates by outing tommy’s recent beach wedding to the whole table, and a post-dinner football game devolves into a fight between tommy and joanne’s husband walter. henry sprays them with the garden hose. the family scatters, then slowly reassembles. henry answers a call from jack and tells tommy he is happy for him. claudia and leo deliver leftovers to joanne, the sisters have it out in the driveway, and leo gets on the plane back to chicago with claudia.

why it is in the canon

this is a thanksgiving movie that earns its place next to planes trains and automobiles. foster understands that family holidays are not about big revelations, they are about the accumulated weight of decades of small resentments and the way one person dropping a turkey can uncork all of it. the cast is the draw: hunter makes claudia frazzled and sharp without being shrill, downey jr. plays tommy as the family’s emotional center who keeps everyone else from killing each other, and bancroft’s adele is the mother who loves you by criticizing your haircut before you have taken off your coat. the film is messy the way actual family gatherings are messy, and it earns its sentimental beats because it refuses to sand down the conflict that comes before them. dvd.