As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

In The Family Man, Nicolas Cage stars as Jack Campbell, aW all Street takeover artist, sleek, cold-eyed, hard-hearted. In a prologue set 13 years earlier we see a different Jack: jeans, leather jacket, rumpled hair. Saying goodbye to his girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni) in an airport. She pleads with him not to take this internship in London, that it will mean the end of their relationship.Forward to present time, we see that Kate was right. When Jack gets a message from his secretary that someone named Kate called, he tosses the slip disdainfully aside. That's ancient history, and Jack Campbell never looks back. Instead, he keeps everyone working late Christmas Eve on their latest billion-dollar merger and orders them all back tomorrow.The Family Man does offer some decent entertainment but in the end is all to predictable and not as touching or romantic as some claim. Not bad but perhaps a bit too far fetched, silly and over the top. Good performances from both leads isn't quite enough from making this film really enjoyable.

This is one of the movies I watch at Christmastime. This year I seemed to get it more. And I thought Nick Cage did a great job. I am glad we have Tea Leoni on film in a good movie. She makes one understand the word wife in a more attractive physical way than we usually get in a movie. There were several moments that I considered writing about. Don Cheadle made his character completely real, a necessary task in this kind of movie. (When one wants a powerful and true performance of a character who can do better than Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle and Denzil Washington. I guess we live in a time when such a statement is thought to come from some personal agenda. It doesn't; this just seemed like a obvious thought last night as I watched Don Cheadle. Anyway...)Annie (the daughter) is crucial to the accepting of the basic "replacement daddy" plot. And she makes it work.I think watching this movie is the only way to get what the performers and creators achieved. Might do it again tonight. (BTW: The commentaries are very good; however the Director commentary needed the movie volume raised whenever commentators weren't discussing.)

The Family Man (2000)Because this is a Christmas movie, I've now seen it twice, and it's really not bad at all. The best aspects, like Don Cheadle, are too brief, and the plot is sometimes rammed into position by sentiment and a need to be popular. But it eventually makes sense and you come around to see the ordinary charm that pervades.Not that Nicolas Cage is exactly charming. He's painted as a spoiled stockbroker jerk, both in life and in his dream. But like a Scrooge seen from within, and seeing an alternate life before his eyes, he has the revelation that changes his life. His arrogance slowly dissolves, and that's maybe what he learns most from the dream.Téa Leoni is chipper and realistic in her cute way and makes for a love interest that isn't an over-idealized cliché, thankfully. And so she draws him into her life with natural ease. It's too easy of course, and there are unanswered questions—even "It's a Wonderful Life" is more believable in that sense, the logic of an alternative life—but it's fine by the end. And in fact, dreams do whatever they want, so there it is.Add this to the growing list of movies that play with this profound and fun idea of seeing what your life would be like if…if whatever, if things had been different, or if you had been better. It's worth seeing on a lazy evening.

The very feel this movie gives you is just something I think is a matter of past sadly, newer movies just seem to trivialize important topics as one presented in the movie, and aren't quite capable of treating them with so much beauty. I really miss movies like this, I cant actually define what it is they have, but I think it has something to do with times they were made in, 1990s and early 2000s had so much more optimism and happiness in them, and I think movies from that era absorbed spirit of those times. Eventually The Family man will leave you wondering what is it you value the most in your life. Also, its not the kind of movie that you will forget completely after some time. Honestly, it deserves an 8 (better than average), but I give it a 10, its current rating does it no justice.