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Awesome Movie

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

These movies, where a workaholic business person miraculously gets switch to an alternate life, seem to come out every year. I have a strike against them to start with because they always put the person in the middle of a new life without having any memory of anything in this new life. How can that experience help them in whatever way they are supposed to need help? But I guess it is supposed to be funny. I guess this movie did it as well as any of them, a la poop diapers.The little girl was the absolute high point of this movie. She was so adorable. I'm amazed they can get a kid that age, or even looks that age, to follow directions.Probably what influenced my dislike for this movie the most is that it made Claudia so incredibly unlikeable in the first half, that I found it hard to recover from that enough to like her in the last half. And this is another case of an instant 180 degree change in personality, which I don't buy.***SPOILERS*** And I totally hate what the story did at the end. There had to be a better way. If I understand what she did as the corporation's representative correctly, she would be disbarred at the least and more likely sued for millions. Nice happy ending that way, but then that didn't happen in the movie.

Gave this 5 stars simply because 5 is right in the middle...as in no better, no worse than any of the other movies in the "Hallmark Holiday" genre. If you like the sappy, all wrapped up in a heartwarming, happy ending type movie, you'll probably like this one too. If you're not a big fan of these movies, this probably isn't going to change your view.It follows the same basic "story" or "message" as so many others. Sure, maybe the details differ, maybe the scenario is reversed (riches to rags vs. rags to riches, a woman vs. a man etc.). But yet.... Just another holiday movie. So, like I said in the title... If you've seen one, you've seen them all! I will say though, the acting in this one is better than a lot of others, but again, nothing extraordinary to make you want to run out and see it.

This is really a terrific film and in one respect, it reminded me of the great "It's A Wonderful Life." of 1946.A career oriented woman with no time for even thinking of a family life meets up with Faye Dunaway and when she is in a car with her, she is suddenly transported to a totally new life with a husband and 2 children.The film first deals with the hardships she faces when realizing that this is her new life, she tries desperately to provide a decent home for all concerned.She does come to realize that her life can be balanced with both family and a career. In fact, she takes on a case, but the opposite side that she was going to take when she was the dedicated career woman.Suddenly, she is transported back to her former life. While the premise may sound inane, this is a real film from the heart, showing that we can balance our lives.

Single, high-flying attorney Claudia (Daphne Zuniga), tops in her class at Harvard Law, is focused on one thing: her career, and making partner at her this-is-your-only-life law firm. Her drive for success has predictably made her miss countless family events, and is about to do the same with this year's Thanksgiving at her sister's (Gina Holden, playing a stay-at-home mom), when Claudia is suddenly thrust by a mysterious figure (Faye Dunaway) into an alternate reality wherein she had given up the idea of practicing law years before in favor of having a husband (Dan Payne) and two children.If this story sounds somewhat familiar, perhaps you saw The Christmas Clause (TV 2008). The current movie takes the basic idea of the former, resets it from Christmas to Thanksgiving, and flips the situation, i.e., instead of a mom with three kids shown what her life would be like as a successful lawyer with all the material goods she could possibly desire, here the lawyer becomes the mom and is shown how much richer her life could be if she broadened her focus and looked beyond her career as the sole purpose of her life.While both movies take a similar route to reach a common goal, this "remake" is executed much more adeptly, and while still firmly rooted in the traditional Hallmark mold and formula, "Thanksgiving" dispenses with many of the clichés which made "Christmas" merely pedestrian.The acting here is uniformly good, but young Kennedi Clements as Claudia's alternate reality daughter, is a heart-stealer in this, her apparent movie debut.