I don't live in America, so Thanksgiving is a bit lost on me, but I thought this movie was very enjoyable, with a totally justified "happy ending." However, I would never, ever label it a comedy, as I would expect all of the more light-hearted dramas to contain some humour. There were places where I expected a joke to be made, or to be made more of, and so when there wasn't one, that scene ended on an anticlimax. I thought the soundtrack was absolutely perfect; I looked it up after watching the film yesterday, and almost every song on the soundtrack album spoke to me, and connected with me far more than the film itself (not a criticism of the film, I just adore the soundtrack that much) Also, the ending was a tad predictable; just from reading the back cover of the DVD I assumed that she would demonstrate her worth through all the people in her block who considered her a friend, and while that wasn't the case, it was close enough to make me feel slightly cheated.

" For Days I have been trying to think of nice April memories and I can only come up with one. She was just gazing out the window and she said "oh mother don't you just love every day?"" : Joy Burns Movie opens in one seedy Manhattan apartment with April (Katie Holmes)and her African-American boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) chaotically preparing for a big thanksgiving dinner. Meanwhile, April's highly dysfunctional family is preparing to leave their upstate New York suburban home to share this dinner with April in New York, anticipating disaster from the petulant April who is also eldest daughter and "black sheep" of the family.Peter Hedges has done something noteworthy in Pieces of April. Movie is shot in digital video format with an overall off-colour outlook. Patricia Clarkson delivers one of her best performance as April's ailing mother "Joy Burns" who is in her terminal stage of Breast Cancer. Her character is hilarious and maddening at the same time. Katie Holmes as April plays the role of a wayward eldest daughter of this dysfunctional family. She has not seen her family for some time now and as it may be the last thanksgiving of her mother, she invites her whole family to her apartment in New York. While preparing thanksgiving dinner and dealing with her neighbours, amid all the chaos she realizes that this may be her last chance to re-conciliate with her family. Movie flips-flops between scenes of neighbour-hopping escapades of April while facing all kinds of troubles in preparing thanksgiving dinner, and her family recollecting April & her shortcomings on their way to Manhattan.Pieces of April is funny, moving, sad & intensely human, may be the best thanksgiving movie I have ever seen. Movie works as an ensemble piece which may have collapsed without its center piece Joy Burns (Patricia Clarkson). Katie Holmes was riveting as April in her punk look. Movie is only 80mins long and in the end leaves you wanting for more of this eccentric family. Unlike the stereotypical depiction of Thanksgiving, Pieces of April explores basic human frailties, but remains true to the thanksgiving theme all the time. Elements of comedy and tragedy are beautifully interwoven in the movie. Hedges pans out a very moving & heartwarming climax by making all the pieces of April come together and bequeaths you with a feeling of bittersweet lightness. If you are a fan of offbeat 'slice of a life' cinema then this one is not to be missed.My Rating: 8/10.http://flickyfriday.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/pieces-of-april-2003/

Moving, funny, sad, and intensely humanAbout thirty minutes into this film, I must confess that I didn't think I was going to like it, but I ended up liking it a great deal. The first problem I had was the look of the film, with an exceptionally grainy cast to the images, made worse by a series of extreme close ups, and bleached out colors. The film never ended up looking good, but the it bothered me less as it went on. The second thing that bothered me was that the set up seemed a bit too stereotypical: black sheep of the family April living in squalor in another town (New York City) makes a Thanksgiving dinner for her disapproving family (loving but sometimes overwhelmed father, younger and negativistic sister, go-with-the-flow younger brother, grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's, and hypercritical, cold, and unloving mother, who is undergoing--probably futility--chemotherapy for breast cancer). Of course, everything starts going wrong and gets worse (April and her boyfriend obviously have no culinary skills, oven is broken and she has extreme difficulty finding anyone who can help her, her mother in the car bringing her family to NYC is constantly berating April and creating a poisoned atmosphere, etc.), and I felt the whole thing was a bit too predictable (which it in part remained). But at some point about halfway through the film, I really started enjoying the film. Sure, it still looked bad, but I started enjoying getting to know the characters, I began to find the humor more and more biting, and I started to want her family to be pleasantly surprised at April's almost heroic efforts to create perhaps the last good day they would all have as a family. I was also enjoying some of the quirky neighbors we meet, including a very helpful middle-aged African American couple living below her, and a bizarre upstairs neighbor with a nice, new stove (played by Sean Hayes of WILL AND GRACE). Things both at April's apartment, with her boyfriend (who unhappily runs into her drug dealer ex-boyfriend just before the dinner starts), and inside the car get worse and worse until everything apparently collapses. And then, perhaps a bit too neatly, everything is put back together again. But just like the characters in the film, we in the end want everything to be nice and pleasant, and it isn't at all hard acceding to that inclination.I liked the cast a great deal. Oliver Platt (he and NOT Will Ferrell should be starring in A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES!) is as excellent as always, and Patricia Clarkson is outstanding as April's dying and acerbic mother. She is especially funny in the scene where she smokes dope (to counteract the effects of the chemo) and seems to rewind to her youth in the car. Katie Holmes is made to be as unlovely as it is possible to make her, but she still possesses enough wounded charm to make us root for her making her dinner a success. Indeed, her ongoing struggles both against fate and against her own culinary ineptness renders her as quite the heroine by the end of the film.This film isn't for everyone. It is a bit bleak, and it isn't the prettiest film in the world to look at, and fans of DAWSON'S CREEK might want to see a prettier Katie Holmes, but if one can get past all this, one just might discover that this is a funny, inspiring, and moving film.

Most people, when they read "family drama", they run. Don't. "Pieces of April" is different. It is keeps you involved and affected, but without any of the blatant good intentions that usually make this kind of movie so hard to watch. What is more, Katie Holmes is a far better actress then you would expect from her tabloid pedigree. Her portrayal of the prodigal daughter attempting reconciliation with her family is as touching as it is funny. April has invited her family to her ramshackle New York apartment for Thanksgiving. The script goes back and forth between April's place (where she has a very hard time preparing a proper Thanksgiving dinner) and her family's road trip (who are fighting and doom-saying all the way to April's doorstep). Disaster is in the air. Fine performance by Oliver Platt as April's father. Magnificent soundtrack by Steve Merritt of The Magnetic Fields.