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Both heartfelt and tough-minded.
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90A film to savor and to be thankful for.
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90It turns out to be an especially warm comedy with a hidden heart. It's a film whose humor has feeling behind it because writer-director Peter Hedges doesn't let his comedy overpower an understanding of how emotionally weighted family situations are always going to be.
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90Hedges's intelligent and touching farce, Pieces of April, makes an important contribution to a small and insignificant subgenre: Thanksgiving Day failure. It does so by raising the bar.
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90A Thanksgiving family reunion comedy that sparkles with acerbic wit, original characters and genuine heart.
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90Pieces of April would deserve your attention and respect even if all these colorful threads didn't come together into a luminous whole. But they do, beautifully and unaffectedly, because what's been on Mr. Hedges's mind is not just a comedy of alienation but a drama of acceptance and reconciliation.
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90This film explores what low-budget films do best: the quirkiness of character, and slightly off-kilter comedy.
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The restraint and wit Hedges and his cast display in putting together Pieces of April pay off in the film's brightly organized, deeply satisfying conclusion.
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This warm and scruffy film may strike some as a mere period piece, but it's juiced with recognizable family trauma and garnished with a quirky sensibility -- it's the portrait of a group of people we come to care about.
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80As the debate between digital video and film rages on, Pieces of April proves a point that many people overlook in the DV/film debate. If you have a great story, a great script and a great cast, DV will work as well as film onscreen.
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80Patricia Clarkson's standout performance as Joy is as honest as it gets, and writer-director Hodges treats her sickness not with pity but great understanding.
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80Hedges keeps everything in balance: The sadness and frivolity all seem to be part of the same emotional continuum. He’s made a lingeringly poignant little movie.
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80It just feels like the real thing, which is a trick few writers can muster and even fewer directors can master.
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80Belongs, wholly and completely, to Clarkson, who delivers Joy's mordant asides and withering observations with a flawless balance of tartness and vulnerability.
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75Holmes nails every laugh without missing the dramatic nuances. She makes April and her movie well worth knowing.
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75Despite its flaws, Pieces of April has a lot of joy and quirkiness; it's well-intentioned in its screwy way, with flashes of human insight, and actors who can take a moment and make it glow.
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75In a movie that dwells so wittily and movingly on forgiveness, you have to grant pardon. Clarkson alone makes "April" a feast.
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75The characters are so convincing and the mood so light and flaky that it's hard not to find it a delicious little hors d'oeuvre of a movie.
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75As pat as some of its conclusions may seem, this low-budget effort has charm, fine acting and one of the few realistic screen depictions of the awkward dynamics of a family trying to circle its wagons.
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75Clarkson, the reigning queen of the indies, is simultaneously funny and heartbreaking, following up killer performances in "The Station Agent" and "All the Real Girls."
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75For a movie about community and forgiveness, family and grace, Pieces of April is refreshingly unsappy.
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75Despite its themes of terminal illness, dysfunctional families, and the need to heal old wounds, the film spends more time provoking laughter than tears.
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75The highest compliment I can pay Pieces of April is that it brings to mind a Paul Simon lyric: "the mother and child reunion is only a motion away."
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75Pieces of April isn't the biggest or best film of the year, but it's touching, witty, smart and well-made. You have to sort through a lot of chaff at the multiplex to find all those qualities in a single movie.
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70Although Pieces of April doesn't quite stick together as a whole -- in some places it's conventional and a bit contrived, particularly the ending, which feels rushed and a little tough to buy -- Hedges peppers it with enough wonderful moments that you can't help warming up to it.
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67The ordeal undeniably strikes an emotional chord, and much of this is due to Holmes, who wonderfully communicates both the character's streak of rebellion and her desire to atone. The movie is a solid star vehicle for her.
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63Sweet and tart in just the right doses, but there's also something underwhelming about it.
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63A modestly scaled film on every level, but Hedges and company manage to ring true on almost all the material's sweet and sour notes.
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60This gentle comedy marks the feature directing debut of writer Peter Hedges, a gifted writer who's perhaps best known for the screenplay based on his novel "What's Eating Gilbert Grape."
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50The movie ends with a sentimental vision of unity that, admittedly, warmed this weary moviegoer's heart. If that vision was earned, I might even have melted.
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50Ultimately Hedges’ film, like the turkey, comes out underdone.
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50The quaint racial blinders are really on the eyes of the filmmaker, Peter Hedges, who shoves his characters into the narrowest of sitcom slots and seals them there.
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50A tougher, more experienced director may someday force Holmes to surprise first herself, then us.
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50Though Pieces Of April comes together with improbable grace, Hedges evokes unearned tears from a premise that's already loaded from the start. Like Holmes, he serves up boxed stuffing and canned cranberries, then fishes for compliments to the chef.
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Patricia Clarkson is wonderfully acerbic as April's cancer-afflicted mom, and the finale is surprisingly subtle and sweet, but the rest of this DV feature is as contrived as a sitcom.
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30Manipulative and cloying, Pieces of April turns into something altogether creepier, even pathological, whenever first-time filmmaker Peter Hedges (screenwriter of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "About a Boy") brings up race.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 13
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Mixed: 0 out of 13
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Negative: 1 out of 13
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JeremyF8
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JudithM.10One of the best movies I've seen all year!