The Family Man

By NINA CAPLAN, Metro

This year's Scrooge is The Family Man's Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage), a Wall Street firm president and consumer extraordinaire, who long ago traded in his sweet college girlfriend, Kate (Téa Leoni), for big bucks, hot babes and freedom from responsibility to anything except his firm's bank account.

With traditional Dickensian timing, an employee of 'the organisation' turns up on Christmas Eve to whisk him off for a glimpse of the life he would have had if he'd held on to Kate. Marriage, suburbia, two kids and a people carrier in place of the Ferrari are Jack's lot, and he's entertainingly appalled - for a while anyway.

There are no surprises but plenty of laughs here, although the simplistic career-versus-relationship dynamic is a big letdown.

Family Jack is a tyre salesman, Kate a non-profit lawyer tearfully hostile to his attempts to get his job from his other life back. High-powered careerists don't get loving nuclear families and vice versa; this vehemently conservative attitude slightly sours what is otherwise a cheerful feelgood movie, as warming yet unsatisfying as a Christmas cup of mulled wine.

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