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At the Movies

 Sometimes, an opening is so strong that you immediately know you're in good hands.


The new film "Thanksgiving" begins with a Black Friday shopping event. A local business owner hires minimal security, then forces disgruntled employees to chip in at the last minute. The tycoon's thoughtless daughter breaks into the store--several minutes before the official countdown--because her friend needs a new lipstick. 

The masses witness this obnoxious move--and a volcano of fury erupts. The surge of the crowd results in several deaths. A shard of glass inserts itself into one human neck. A braid of hair gets stuck in the wheels of a shopping cart, and thus a piece of scalp "frees itself" from a head. One shopper really wants a free toaster oven, so she snatches it from the hands of a corpse.

The writer is saying something here: "I promise to deliver in the middle sections, and in the ending, as well." So: you get an interlude in which stainless steel "corn forks" become daggers. And the ending makes use (memorably) of a large turkey-shaped parade balloon.

You might not carry these characters with you for the rest of your life. Still, there are smart observations about class conflict, and especially about the odd little bits of tension within any nuclear family.

One of the sharper scripts I know of, from the recent past.
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