Pieces of April (and I thought my family didn't get along! ;) )

On Tuesday November 20th, I was one of 4 who chose to watch Pieces of April in class.  I didn't care much for the movie.  I spent most of the time just trying to figure out April's family.  What bothered me the most about the movie was how negative it was.  There didn't seem to be any happiness or thankfulness from anyone till the very end.  I know from my own family that not everyone gets along and there are other ways each of us would rather spend half of our day than with each other but usually those feelings are felt by one or two people and are only temporary.  I think April's family lacked or didn't share the same sense of humor with each other and the only one who did make jokes was April's mom who seemed to be the most depressed out of all of them.  I think being able to laugh with (or at) family members and feed off each others humor makes family get-together's that much more enjoyable.

The whole movie went back and forth between the family trying to get to April's for dinner and all their emotional struggles while April struggled to impress her family with a Thanksgiving meal.  And in the middle of all that, April's boyfriend went through hell to impress her family!  Despite all the struggles that whole family went through on that Thanksgiving day, some of April's neighbors were able to help her out and introduce her to their own family/cultural Thanksgiving traditions.  I did feel bad for April when her family drove off after realizing where she lived and seeing her boyfriend beat up.  She seemed to enjoy decorating the stairwell and to feel so unappreciated after all the work she put in.  Of all the people to decide on their own to go visit April, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was her mother. I don't think it would have meant as much had it been anyone else.  I was glad that everything April had done didn't go to waste and her family was able to see a different side to her.

Hopefully no one had a Thanksgiving as stressful as April did! I surely didn't :)