A wayward daughter invites her dying mother and the rest of her estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.A wayward daughter invites her dying mother and the rest of her estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.A wayward daughter invites her dying mother and the rest of her estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 15 wins & 22 nominations total
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaOne of the inspirations for the movie came from a story Peter Hedges had heard about a group of young adults who had "borrowed" an apartment so they could celebrate their first Thanksgiving in Manhattan together. The oven in the apartment did not work so they had to go door to door in the building, trying to find an oven in which to cook their turkey.
- GoofsWhen Bobby goes out, April is shown with a bandage on her finger long before she actually cuts it.
- Quotes
April Burns: I'm the first pancake.
Evette: What do you mean?
Eugene: She's the one you're supposed to throw out.
- Crazy creditsSpecial thanks to ... The Cata Family, ... Elan, Scott, Ira and all the tenants of 176 Suffolk Street.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The 61st Annual Golden Globe Awards (2004)
- SoundtracksI Think I Need a New Heart
(1999)
Written by Stephin Merritt
Performed by The Magnetic Fields
Courtesy of Merge Records
Featured review
My family Thanksgiving dinner is latent with chaos, a breath away from murder, on the edge of total misunderstanding. But we survive it and return another year because we don't know any better, or amnesia sets in, or these are the only people who will feast with us. Tim Hedges catches my family and others I am sure in 'Pieces of April,' a comedy in which Goth girl April and her black boyfriend invite her family from Jersey to their Manhattan apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.
Mom, played by the current middle-age rage, Patricia Clarkson ('Station Agent'), is dying from cancer, which allows her on the tumultuous ride with hubby and two other children to indulge in sardonic observations about her daughter's inability to do anything right, much less pull off a dinner, to comments about her lovers, including long-suffering dad (Oliver Platt), who patiently waits in horror for his wife to die.
Katie Holmes' April flies to almost every other apartment to find a working stove, but what she finds is a menagerie of tenants, most of whom like her don't know their way around a dinner, much less Thanksgiving. As she figures out how to cut an onion or carry a turkey, each one of us can remember the first time we learned those tricks, often when the family could enjoy the humiliation.
The HD filming adds a home-movie touch to the proceedings, which are all predictable because we have all been there. I recommend the film for its true contribution to the American version of 'kitchen-sink' realism and its evocation of thankfulness in all of us that our Thanksgivings were never this disastrous, just by a hair though!
Mom, played by the current middle-age rage, Patricia Clarkson ('Station Agent'), is dying from cancer, which allows her on the tumultuous ride with hubby and two other children to indulge in sardonic observations about her daughter's inability to do anything right, much less pull off a dinner, to comments about her lovers, including long-suffering dad (Oliver Platt), who patiently waits in horror for his wife to die.
Katie Holmes' April flies to almost every other apartment to find a working stove, but what she finds is a menagerie of tenants, most of whom like her don't know their way around a dinner, much less Thanksgiving. As she figures out how to cut an onion or carry a turkey, each one of us can remember the first time we learned those tricks, often when the family could enjoy the humiliation.
The HD filming adds a home-movie touch to the proceedings, which are all predictable because we have all been there. I recommend the film for its true contribution to the American version of 'kitchen-sink' realism and its evocation of thankfulness in all of us that our Thanksgivings were never this disastrous, just by a hair though!
- JohnDeSando
- Oct 26, 2003
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $300,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $2,528,664
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $48,422
- Oct 19, 2003
- Gross worldwide
- $3,282,321
- Runtime1 hour 20 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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