Nicolas Cage Review - The Family Man (2000)

The year 2000's Christmas time feel-good family film takes successful Wall Street master Jack Campbell, the Cage himself, and dumps him in an alternate timeline; one where he married his young sweetheart instead of going into big business in London, became a father of two and sells tires for a living.

I do like the unexplained nature of this journey, being simply known as a "glimpse" by Cage, this name even subtly foreshadowing to Cage's initial return to reality.

As with any film of this nature he goes from loving money and wealth to loving family life and the smaller things; while clichéd it is presented fairly well, with Nic showing his hatred of his forced situation in ways only he can with his wide variety of faces and freak outs. To accompany this over used plot the finale even takes place with him and his love interest at an airport, a shallow reference to the initial life changing moment where he chose to fly to London.

The message of pursuing profit resulting in unhappiness is used to excess, beating one around the head with it multiple times, even when it seems illogical; I understand within the original time Jack feels lonely, which is indeed a problem with his life, however within the glimpse he manages to get back to his financial status with his new family, and is painted as a villain for wanting the riches, this seems a little harsh as he is still shown to care greatly about his family and his wife.

Overall a good solid Cage film, not the best yet far from the worst, not much crazy-cage but family-cage is a pleasing change, one of Mr. Cage's better roles, and a much calmer film than one is used to from this most extreme of men.

Rating - 

Direction - 2.3/5

Soundtrack -3/5

Plot - 2.5/5

Characters - 1.5/5

Overall - 9.3/20