The Family Man (2000)

The Family Man (2000) is about a wealthy stockbroker named Jack (Nicholas Cage) who 13 years ago decided to go for a career with lots of money instead of his high school sweetheart Kate. He lives his perfect life with casual sexual conquests, a Ferrari, and the other materialistic stuff the movie desperately tries to tell you is bad. On Christmas night he encounters a strange man played by Don Cheadle. Afterward, he wakes up in a timeline where he chooses Kaite and a family instead of the money. 

The movie is fairly predictable. Jack hates being a family man, but towards the end, he falls in love with the idea and the life he lives with Kate and their children. When he returns to his former life he finds it empty and tries his best to win back Kate. The movie is very reminiscent of better films like It’s a Wonderful Life. 

The movie is funny at times and Cage plays the part well with just enough over-the-top Cageisms without it ever feeling like it’s too much. The big problem I have with the film is the insistence on the fact that Jack’s life before is inherently bad. The movie presents his life with a lot of money as inherently bad even though Jack constantly tries to get back to it. At one point Jack gets the chance to merge the two worlds. He talks his way back to his old job. He now has the power to have a family and a lot of money. The message of the film is that money is not everything, so of course Katie is opposed to it for very little reason other than to hammer home the not-so-subtle message. The film makes it explicit that you can either have money or love, but not both.

My biggest gripe is that so few people get to live the lives of their dreams. The vast majority of people settle down, buy a house, and get a family. They then proceed to live a relatively uninteresting life. Now, I need to stress that there is nothing wrong with such a life but the film does a poor job of conveying why this is inherently better than the rich life. To me it feels like the movie is tapping into a common understanding that money isn’t everything and what matters the most in this life is love. 
Yet Jack’s life before does not seem so bad. The film does a few tricks like showing him waking up alone in the dark, indicating a void in his life.

The ending is to clique with a big expression of love at the airport of all places. It’s nice since it mirrors the opening of the film where Jack leaves. The problem is that Jack is talking about the other timeline and their kids. The only reason this speech works on Katie is that the script says it does. Imagine your ex from 13 years ago started talking about a different timeline where you were happy with children in vivid detail, would that work? Or would you run away? Maybe I am too cynical, but the whole end seems overly convenient. 

Again, I agree with the message of the film, I too don’t believe money is what makes people happy. It is not the message itself, it’s the way it’s told. The movie is trying to gaslight the audience into accepting the premise without doing the heavy lifting itself. I also found Danny Elfman’s score to be way too prevalent, and it killed all subtlety with the bombastic music scenes where it’s obvious to everybody what you are supposed to feel at any moment. I found the last 30 min to be over-sentimental. The movie also suffers from being too long.