Review: ‘Pieces of April’ proves captivating

Heidi Hochstetler
Staff Writer
April 15, 2004, Page 5

Even though “Pieces of April” chronicles one family’s Thanksgiving holiday, it is entertaining at any time of year.
Filmed in just 16 days, with a budget of less than $7 million, “Pieces of April” relies on acting ability and an interesting script rather than on big-budget gimmicks. Katie Holmes stars as April Burns, a young woman who tries to bridge a family rift by cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
After a struggle to prepare the turkey, April and her boyfriend Bobby, played by Derek Luke, discover their oven is broken.
April is forced to knock on doors in her dilapidated apartment building, looking for a neighbor willing to cook the turkey for a few hours.
Patricia Clarkson delivers an Oscar-nominated performance as April’s ailing mother, Joy. During the long car ride to April’s New York apartment, Joy becomes increasingly acerbic and despondent as she realizes that her only good memory of her oldest daughter was actually about April’s younger sister, Beth, played by Alison Pill.
April’s father, played by Oliver Platt, is the mediator who tries to hold the family together. From the know-it-all Beth to April’s brother Timmy, played by John Gallagher Jr., who rolls his mother’s joints, the Burns family seems more likely to self-destruct than to mend fences.
This honest portrayal of the characters in “Pieces of April” is one of the movie’s strengths. Each member of the Burns family is multifaceted; they are, in a word, human.
“Pieces of April” writer and director Peter Hedges said that the movie is a tribute to, though not a biography of, his mother who died of cancer in 2000.If you missed “Pieces of April” on the big screen, it should be your next rental.