Home for the Holidays . Tucson Weekly . 11-22-95

Home for the Holidays

DIRECTED BY: Jodie Foster

REVIEWED: 11-22-95

Jodie Foster proves herself once again with this delightful glimpse into the "every-home" holiday experience. All dysfunctions being equal, Home for the Holidays paints a single-family portrait with an eye for the universal: sibling rivalry, clownish overcompensation, overbearing mothers and unwelcome confessions wrought by advancing age. These are heavy labels for the light-hearted chapters of Home for the Holidays, cracked open story-fashion in a series of vignettes with warm and (literally) hysterical performances by Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Charles Durning, Anne Bancroft and Cynthia Stevenson (a sort of alter-ego of her character Hope on the TV series Hope and Glory). Dermot Mulroney also stars, but is clearly "not part of the family": While the rest of the cast manages a truly familial chemistry, Mulroney as the friend-who-came-to-dinner remains a wooden outsider. All in all, Home For The Holidays offers a great way to nurse that post-prandial Thanksgiving hangover.

--Tom Danehy

Full Length Reviews
Home for the Holidays

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