FilmBlather.com

"Honey, roll it tighter next time."

Pieces of April looks like it is charming most of those who see it, but I was irritated by its artifice. Writer-director Peter Hedges had a good idea for a touching movie but forgot to fill the roles with believable characters. His script is sketchy and basic, his supporting cast uneven, his resolution easy and unsatisfying. His idea has remained exactly that, an idea, only now it's on the screen.

Still, there are some nice performances here, particularly by the reliable Patricia Clarkson, and by Oliver Platt, in his first notable project in more than two years. They play Joy and Jim Burns, a married couple going to their grown-up daughter's house for Thanksgiving dinner. They've never gotten along with April (Katie Holmes) -- there's a scene in which they try to come up with a single positive memory from her childhood, and the one thing they find turns out to be about April's sister Beth -- but Joy is dying of cancer, so she accepts April's invitation. The impossibly selfish Beth is against it, under the guise of it being too hard on her ailing mother.

April, meanwhile, is having trouble cooking a turkey in her ghetto apartment building. While her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) is out getting classy clothes for his first meeting with April's folks, her oven goes out, leaving her with a raw turkey and no fire. She is forced to run around the building turkey in hand looking for someone who will let her borrow an oven. The cast of characters who live in her building are certainly redoubtable. One is a vegan who is offended by the idea of meat fumes in her kitchen. Another is charitable, but has an apartment that looks like the aftermath of some destructive weather phenomenon. A nice black family does finally let her start her turkey in their oven, but they have their own to cook, and she is forced to keep searching.

The film intercuts April's quest for golden-brown poultry with the family's suspiciously dramatic and confrontational car trip as well as Bobby's search for appropriate apparel. Shot on digital video, Pieces of April is shooting for a unique intimacy, but inexplicably achieves only a weird staginess and artificiality. Unfortunately, this element is not limited to the cinematography, infecting the script as well.

Problem is, the drama is more conceptual than genuine. We sense that this should be a situation full of pathos, etc., but the characters are unconvincing; they seem to have been created solely to embody their respective conflicts. I don't think there's a line of dialogue spoken that does not relate to the turkey, the road trip, or the relationship between Joy and April. That's not necessarily damning in an 81 minute movie, but I feel it is symptomatic of the script's shallowness.

With all of that vitriol out of my system, I can safely talk about the numerous worthwhile elements of the widely-praised indie. Hedges has written two terrific supporting characters in Evette and Eugene, the kindly black couple who listen to April's story and decide to help her out. The performances are uniformly solid, including the lead one by Katie Holmes, who has been making progressively more courageous project selections. An unrelated observation: I believe every black character who shows up on screen is portrayed in an unfailingly positive light.

But all that good stuff is mitigated by other, obnoxious aspects of the film, such as the character of Wayne, the upstairs neighbor, who exists for the sole purpose for weirding out April and the audience. And whether or not it is an intentional move on the part of the screenwriter, the ending is abrupt and false, as lifetimes full of hurt are negated in literally a matter of seconds. A big hit at Sundance, Pieces of April promises to be a crowd-pleaser in general release, but how much of that is at the expense of emotional authenticity?