Home For The Holidays (1995) Critic Reviews

Home for the Holidays strikes such a perfect note that it's hard at first to realize what an impressive balancing act it is.Read the full review

Foster directs the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment.Read the full review

Foster keeps the party hopping, although more dark humor would have helped before she winds it down with sentiment and bromides.Read the full review

Ms. Foster and the screenwriter, W. D. Richter, have given this film some peculiar mood swings, so that it starts out zanily and winds down to a wistful note.Read the full review

The movie faithfully records the rivalries among the various members of a fractious Baltimore family, but it never really attempts to resolve any of the internecine conflicts. In that sense, it's less ambitious than many a TV series.Read the full review

What results is a film with some bright spots but whose effect is finally as muddled and wearying as the event itself sometimes is.Read the full review

But director Jodie Foster and writer W.D.Richter aren't content to serve the usual Planes, Trains and Cliches at their Thanksgiving feast. With her keen actor's instincts, Foster piles on plenty for her terrific cast to chew on and for us to savor. [03 Nov 1995, Pg.01.D]Read the full review

Foster's film offers its fair share of laughs, although most come at the expense of "easy mark" characters. Dramatically, however, the movie is only a step up from a flop.Read the full review

Foster, working from a patchy, meandering script by W.D. Richter, produces scene after scene of rudderless banter. The movie is all asides, all nattering; the actors seem lost in their busy, fractious shticks.Read the full review