The heaviest turkey ever

No one wants to eat alone on Thanksgiving, not even girls with pink hair and neck tattoos, who are really just daughters, after all.

In Peter Hedges’ sweet 2004 drama “Pieces of April,” April Burns (Katie Holmes) has invited her suburban family to her Lower East Side apartment to celebrate the holiday. It will mark the first time her family has visited her new apartment, the first time she has cooked the family dinner, and, she hopes, the first time she and her family have enjoyed each other’s company.

April desperately wants her family, and her mother especially, to see that she is no longer a failure. She has changed. She has a job and a wonderful boyfriend. She can prepare Thanksgiving dinner.

But hers is the heaviest turkey that has ever lain in a roasting pan. She seems to think if she fails at Thanksgiving dinner, the rest of her successes mean nothing – or will mean nothing to her mother.

She is probably right.

The film cuts back-and-forth from April’s struggles with Mayflower-inspired cuisine to her family’s journey from Pennsylvania. Throughout the drive, April’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) expresses nothing but bitter dissatisfaction with her oldest daughter.

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