To get into the Thanksgiving spirit, I went on a hunt to find a fun Thanksgiving movie to watch. Not many movies center around Thanksgiving, but at last I found a movie that appealed to me: Pieces of April.
This movie is quite old, released in 2003, but it has an aesthetic that appealed to me. It played heavy on Thanksgiving themes too, and an added bonus was how it was free on Tubi.
April, the black sheep of her family, invites her family over for Thanksgiving after the hearing that her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
April and her boyfriend Johnny spend the day preparing for their arrival, which ends up pretty hectic between a broken oven and Johnny getting in a fight with April’s ex-boyfriend. Still, April meets a lot of kind people in her apartment building along the way who are willing to help her get things ready.
The movie goes back and forth between April, Johnny and April’s family. Her mom, Joy, is a very complex character I struggled hard to like. April’s dad, Jim, is a very typical fatherly figure. There’s April’s sister Beth, who I disliked passionately, and their brother Timmy, who has a very calm demeanor in contrast. Lastly, their grandmother Dottie suffers from dementia.
The family drives from Pennsylvania all the way to New York City, criticizing April the whole time. Joy and Beth lead the insults, constantly putting her down like she was the worst, most hopeless person on Earth. Watching how April was getting degraded after she spent the whole day trying to make everything perfect for them irritated me so badly.
When April’s family finally arrives, things fall apart. The moment they see April’s apartment and her boyfriend they feel repulsed and leave without so much as a greeting.
Instead, they go to a diner. There, Joy sees a mother yelling at her young daughter before abandoning her, triggering guilt over how she’s treated April. Together with Timmy, she decides to return to April’s apartment, hitching a ride from two bikers to get there.
When Joy knocks on April’s door, April is serving dinner to the neighbors who helped her cook. The look on April’s face when she sees her mother is filled with warmth and disbelief.
The two embrace, and the moment is very emotional. Soon after, the rest of the family joins and everyone sits down together to share a meal. The ending was really tender and sincere.
This movie really captured what Thanksgiving is all about: looking around and appreciating all the people you should be very thankful for. The complex mother and daughter relationship between April and Joy feels realistic. Even though the movie was a tough watch at times, the ending brought everything full circle.
“Piece of April” is an emotional yet bittersweet watch that perfectly fits the Thanksgiving season.
Overall Review: 9/10
