After losing her job, making out with her soon to be ex-boss, and finding out that her daughter plans to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Claudia Larson has to face spending the holiday with her family. She wonders if she can survive their crazy antics.
Foster and Richter, of course, want to do more than make audiences laugh; they want us to be touched by their characters' humanity and take an interest in a budding romance, but that rarely is the case.
– Kenneth Turan,
Los Angeles Times,
13 Feb 2001
rotten:
Foster keeps the party hopping, although more dark humor would have helped before she winds it down with sentiment and bromides.
– Peter Travers,
Rolling Stone,
12 May 2001
fresh:
Neither caustic nor sentimental, it's a film that maybe half the people on Earth have at one time considered writing.
– Mick LaSalle,
San Francisco Chronicle,
18 Jun 2002
rotten:
Spirited but uneven.
– Janet Maslin,
New York Times,
20 May 2003
fresh:
Foster's second directorial effort is a vividly drawn if too episodic portrait of an eccentric family, well acted by the entire cast, especially Holly Hunter and Robery Downey Jr.