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Rough-hewn 'Pieces of April' ends up enjoyable
Katie Holmes stars as April in the comedic drama 'Pieces of April'
United Artists
Director: Peter Hedges
Stars: Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt
MPAA rating: PG-13 for language, sensuality, drug content and images of nudity
Now playing: Squirrel Hill Theater
Many rhapsodize about the virtues of digital, which gives a spontaneous free-for-all feel to scenes. What it is even more is a 70-year setback in craftsmanlike cinematography.
The picture's threadbare feel works against it in another respect: No one had time to refine the many moments that feel haphazard without a corresponding gain in veracity.
"Pieces of April" does, though, have a rough-hewn amiability. It is to movies what we all are the first few minutes of every day: mobile but not necessarily ready for our close-up.
April Burns (Katie Holmes of "Dawson's Creek"), who occupies a dreary Lower Manhattan walk-up with live-in Bobby (Derek Luke of "Antwone Fisher"), liberated herself from her family's cocoon in upstate New York some time back.
Tattooed and with a modified Gothic look, she's responding this Thanksgiving Day to her inner family member. Largely at Bobby's instigation, she has invited her family for the holiday and is preparing to cook her first meal, apparently ever -- turkey with the fixings.
Because she had used the oven only for storage, she didn't realize it's broken.
Driving down from an unspecified suburban town are her peace-keeping father Jim (Oliver Platt of "Dr. Dolittle"), terminally ill mother Joy (Patricia Clarkson of "Far From Heaven"), potheaded brother Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.), apprehensive and divisive sister Beth (Alison Pill) and senile grandmother (Alice Drummond).
While the quintet prolongs its trip, stopping repeatedly for junk food, the burial of road kill, a joint or two and Joy's queasy stomach, the preternaturally ill-prepared April races through the walk-up brusquely begging oven time from an ethnic cross-section of judgmental New Yorkers.
Among them are a helpful couple (Lilias White and Isiah Whitlock as Evette and Eugene) and the oddball Wayne (Sean Hayes of TV's "Will & Grace").
The 81-minute "Pieces of April" is the first film directed by Peter Hedges, who also wrote the screenplay. He also wrote "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" and co-wrote "About a Boy," all sharing the theme of dysfunctional families.
"Pieces of April" is a likable diversion despite several ongoing miscalculations. Bobby turns out to be a superfluous character whose existence detracts from April's mission.
The notion of Joy's illness is introduced so awkwardly that she seems at first to be emotionally unstable rather than physically ill. Hedges and Clarkson attempt to leaven Joy's situation by making her an irreverent renegade, but she winds up seeming like a sitcom eccentric.
Hedges understates April's quest for redemption, or at least reconciliation, through a grand gesture of domesticity.
A bonus for those who knew him when: After years of being an assistant film editor on four Woody Allen movies and others such as "The River Wild," Canonsburg's Mark Livolsi has a solo editing credit here.
