Holidays are a time for families to come together. More often than not, these little "reunions" manage to bring out the worst in people and unpleasant episodes from the past get dredged up and brutally dissected for the thousandth time.
Rather than limit herself to one family's deluge of dysfunctional dialogue at Thanksgiving, writer/director Gurminder Chadha, zooms in on a multi-family multicultural view of the holiday. We are introduced to the Jewish family with the lesbian daughter and her lover, the Hispanic family with the philandering husband and newly liberated wife, the cross-generational Vietnamese family's struggle with old traditions vs. new realities, and the successful yet fractured African American family. Happy holidays!

Unlike BIG NIGHT where food is intended to inspire pure sensory decadence, or LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE in which it takes on a mystical, magical quality, Chadha's uses food to illuminate the contrasts between the families in the piece. While turkey is served as the main course at every dinner table, it is prepared, cooked and presented very differently by each family. The roasted polenta, fajitas, spring rolls and homemade macaroni and cheese that supplant the side dishes typically associated with Thanksgiving - corn, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes - further enhance the feeling (and reminded me that I had missed dinner). But movies do not live by food alone.

What sets this film apart from its contemporaries is not its parallel, intertwining plots, or the setting, but its execution. Any of the plots could easily provide enough fodder for a full-length movie, which makes their skillful amalgamation in 106 minutes that much more impressive. This is more remarkable when one takes into account that no one in the voluminous (there are dozens of speaking parts) and talented ensemble cast is there as window dressing - every character is solid and has a clearly defined purpose. Rarer still is the fact that the lion's share of screen time is devoted to the development of strong female characters, which might explain what drew Mercedes Ruehl, Julianna Marguelies and Joan Chen to the project. My praise has not yet ended.

The dialogue is realistic and well written, and the situations, though sometimes tongue-in-cheek, familiar and believable. The pacing is quick, slowing down to take a breather only when the audience needs it, but never leaves the viewer behind. The editing is tight and clean, rarely allowing any one scene to run too long. Finally, the cinematographer deserves congratulations for the exceptionally sumptuous food shots, I swear I could smell the turkey. In movies, as in life however, nothing is perfect.

The movie does lapse into stereotypes in several instances, for example, could anyone be as truly annoying and clueless as the character of Aunt Bea (played to wonderful excess by Estelle Harris)? The film also goes to the sentimentality well a little too often and the ending, while clever, is contrived. While noticeable, these flaws are merely mildly distracting, and do not overwhelm the film.