THE FAMILY MAN

The classic holiday conundrum: would you rather spend Christmas with a scantily clad stranger in your huge high-rise apartment or wake up in a bath of dog slaver on a morning filled with screaming kids and wrapping paper? In Brett Ratner’s The Family Man, Nicolas Cage and Téa Leoni star as Jeff and Kate, college sweethearts whose adult lives hinge on a decision they make in an airport: does Jeff take a London internship while Kate goes to law school, or do they continue with their plans to start a life together? Ignoring Kate’s pleas to stay, Jeff goes to England; 13 years later he’s an über-successful Wall Street broker and ladies’ man. But an encounter with a stranger who is somehow able to alter reality plucks him from his posh New York pad and plops him down in the middle of suburban New Jersey. Realizing he’s being given a glimpse of what things would have been like had he married Kate, Jeff decides that it’s a wonderful life. This predictable story line benefits from Leoni’s performance: she’s not suspicious enough of the clueless look-alike who mysteriously takes her husband’s place one day, but her optimism and good humor — qualities The Family Man shares — are ample compensation.

— April Greene