Most
Americans are not millionaires but wish they could be, but
most millionaires are too busy to enjoy a comfortable family
life after work and rarely contemplate what they are missing,
or so we are led to believe in The Family Man,
directed by Brett Ratner. Chronologically, the story begins
in 1987, when Jack Campbell (played by Nicholas Cage) is at
the airport, about to board a flight from New York to London
to become a trainee at Barclay’s Bank. His sweetheart Kate
(played by Téa Leoni), who is about to enroll in law school,
suddenly sobs that his departure will mean the end of their
relationship and begs him not to go. Jack, however, departs.
After his year in London, he returns to New York and eventually
becomes a billionaire CEO of an investment firm. On Christmas
eve 2000, when the film actually begins, he receives a telephone
call from Kate but is too busy with his $130 billion merger
deal and nightly visit from a high-class prostitute to return
the call. Walking home from work one night, he goes into a
convenience store to purchase eggnog. Cash, an African American
(played by Don Cheadle), pulls a gun when the Asian American
store proprietor refuses to process his lottery ticket. Jack,
however, offers to pay him $200 for the ticket, and Cash rewards
him by offering him a "glimpse" of what his life might have
been had he not gone to London, though Campbell declares,
"I have everything I’ve ever wanted." After sleeping in his
Manhattan apartment that night, he wakes up in bed with Kate
in their suburban home in Teaneck, New Jersey, where he has
two adorable children and is assistant manager of a tire company.
During the next part of the film he tries to discover who
he is in the context of a well-programmed family life, working
for his wife’s father (played by Harve Presnell), and he has
to cope with unfamiliar friends at various social occasions.
In an effort to merge family with corporate success, he impresses
the executives at his old firm, who hire him and give him
the keys to a plush Manhattan apartment, but suburban Kate
objects, so he declines the offer. He gradually realizes that
his family routine involving people being themselves is more
rewarding than his corporate routine of sycophantic employees
and alluring prostitutes, all trying to make a buck. Ultimately,
Cash lowers the curtain on his "glimpse," and he is back to
normal as a corporate CEO. He then decides to return that
telephone call from Kate. A successful unmarried Manhattan
pro bono attorney who is moving to head her law firm’s Paris
office, she has summoned him to return a box of mementos from
their earlier life together, but as he takes the box and leaves,
he realizes that he has been given the brush-off by someone
dear to his heart. Filled with nostalgia that he might miss
another opportunity to be with the love of his life, he drives
to Kennedy Airport to stop her from going to Paris. His plea
to start a life together with a family and a suburban home
in their future leaves Kate at first speechless. That she
might or might not consent and abandon her plans for a life
in Paris to live with the love of her life provides the only
real suspense in the film, but her answer is not surprising.
The Family Man is perhaps a riposte to American
Beauty (1999) about the advantages of the simple
family life, while readers of Eugen Onegin may enjoy the Americanization
of the Pushkin story, and filmviewers will find that The
Family Man is a variation on the theme of It’s a Wonderful
Life (1946) or Sliding Doors (1998),
with a tagline "What if . . . " As a feel-good movie, The
Family Man is therapy for the many who never achieved
ambitions of attaining great wealth and position but settled
instead to live the happy conventional American dream. Middle
class filmviewers, in short, can rest content that they enjoy
better lives than the rich without any need to question corporate
greed, racism, extreme income inequality, or why the now-reconciled
couple in The Family Man may not live happily
ever after. MH
I
want to comment on this film
