Everyone remembers cooking their first turkey on Thanksgiving. I know I do know: I was 23, living in a small apartment in Brooklyn, cooking my first official Thanksgiving dinner for my boyfriend, two of his friends, and my roommate. It was a stressful yet exciting time, when nothing was going right, but everything was perfect. That’s How I Describe April Burns’ (Katie Holmes) Trying to Master Thanksgiving Dinner Fragments of Aprilis a 2003 indie drama about the culinary disasters and disasters we call family, and how we sometimes inexplicably want to show up for them…even if our execution is chaotic.
I remember seeing this movie when it first came out. I was 21 at the time (about April’s age), and I recognized April’s need for independence and freedom, and her desire to impress her family as she was now: an adult trying to mature. Although I was still a few years away from cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner, as a sophomore at NYU, I was eager to escape dorm life and experience that autonomy. Even though it seemed stressful at the time, it was exciting to stumble into planning life on your own terms rather than your family’s. Even now, as a woman in her early 40s, I can relate to this.
So, in preparation for Thanksgiving this year, I decided to rewatch the Peter Hedges film to see if the performances and story really held up.
Fragments of April revisit
April, the accidental hostess of a screwed-up family, decides to invite her estranged family to her tiny, possibly haunted New York apartment for Thanksgiving. Spoiler alert: things don’t go as planned.
She’s a mess in the cutest way. This is Katie Holmes, who wore a nose ring before she had an actual nose ring! Her hair is half red, her eyeliner is thick and pierced. She’s kind of like your high school rebellious goth who came back to town and decided to roast a turkey as an apology for stealing your eyeliner that one time.
Instead, April is roasting a turkey, possibly apologizing for her existence, or at least for making it for her parents—especially her mother (played by Patricia Clarkson) Hell on Earth apologizes, she is dying of cancer.
Holmes leans into April’s scrappy side, giving her a chaotic charm that makes you root for her even when she’s clearly out of her depth. Watching her navigate the kitchen is like watching someone try to defuse a bomb with salad tongs: you know disaster is coming, but you hope she can figure it out.
Relevant family news
While April is busy battling poultry and malfunctioning appliances, her family is on the way to her apartment — a trip that feels like a mix national lampoon’s vacation Group therapy gone wrong. And, let’s be honest, who can’t stand a bit of family dysfunction during the holidays?
Leading the cast is April’s snarky mother Joy (played by Clarkson), a role for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Joey makes a lot of snarky quips and is also a little crazy?
We are introduced to her, fully dressed and sitting stiffly in the family station wagon, her expression stoic, while the rest of the family remains blissfully asleep. It’s a disturbing image, and I don’t know if it’s entirely true. It’s definitely a statement – like when she lets her son steal a scooter behind a restaurant so they can secretly drive to April’s apartment. But hey, she’s dying and exhausted, so I guess she’s entitled to her little quirk!
Her husband Jim (Oliver Platt), the human equivalent of a shrug emoji, tries to maintain composure while dealing with his wife’s illness, their children’s dysfunction, and the open road. We all know Jim, right?
The rest of the family – including April’s bubbly but bitter sister, an introverted brother (who spends much of the trip documenting everything with a camera like a 2003 social media influencer) and a Grandma, who suffers from dementia – has also been on this awkward journey together. (This is weird.)
Ode to the Black Sheep
Back in town, April Thanksgiving preparations turn into a comedy of errors.
Just as she’s about to put in the turkey, her oven breaks, forcing her to seek help from her eccentric neighbors, including Sean Hayes, an overly dramatic germaphobe with a deep voice And Strange, treats her turkey like a ticking biohazard. Other neighbors’ attitudes varied from vaguely helpful to downright weird and rude. If you’ve ever hosted a Thanksgiving and prayed that the oven wouldn’t break, you know the pain of April.
There’s also Bobby (Derek Luke), April’s golden retriever boyfriend, who spends his days running errands and dodging would-be muggers, one of whom I assume is April’s ex-boyfriend. I don’t know why we needed this subplot, but indie films at the time generally didn’t cut the fat. This could be an attempt to show that at least April has someone in her life who supports her, as her family’s loyalty to her is…well, questionable.
For a moment, I thought, Do people associated with April really like April? What had she done to deserve such condemnation? So when she was little, she burned a piece of her sister’s hair! Does this mean you cut off all contact and hold a grudge for the rest of your life?
TL; DR
So, does it hold up? Yes and no. Because it’s one of the few independent films that exists in our current cinematic landscape, I think its chaotic moments are part of its charm – a bit like April.
Without giving too much away, the film’s climax brings the family together in a way that’s earned, not forced. Thanksgiving dinner isn’t perfect (what holiday meal is perfect?), but it’s real, and the addition of April’s neighbors is heart-warming, and not in a cheesy way.
Fragments of April is one of those obscure Thanksgiving movies that doesn’t get enough love and attention compared to its other turkey dinner counterparts, e.g. trains, planes and cars or Go home for the holidaysbut I think a lot of people especially understand this time of year.
The film pinpoints an ever-relevant theme: families are messy, life is unpredictable, and sometimes the turkey is dry—but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the effort. At least you can say you tried, and sometimes that’s the best we can do.
