I had a strange sense of connection to Cold Turkey. Not that my family had dysfuntional holidays like the one we see here, but I think, if we had as many out-spoken members as the Turner family, we might have had similarly tumultuous Thanksgivings.
I had a strange sense of connection to Cold Turkey. Not that my family had dysfuntional holidays like the one we see here, but I think, if we had as many out-spoken members as the Turner family, we might have had similarly tumultuous Thanksgivings.
Peter Bogdonovich plays Poppy, the saggy-faced, patriarch of the Turner family. At one time a respected Stanford professor (of Political Science, I think, but don’t recall it being specified), he is credited with being the man that disbanded the Iraqi military, which rather over-shadowed some of that respect. Now he drinks too much white wine and seems burdened by his everyday life. He has two grown daughters from a first marriage, and a son, in law school, from his second and current wife, Deborah. The family gets together on the day before Thanksgiving, the younger sister, Nina, hasn’t visited in 15 years, because yes, she’s the black sheep of the family, and as elder sis says, “She’s crazy.” And so Thanksgiving with the Turners turns out to be a festival of yelling, accusations, and revealed secrets. Ah, nothing says “holidays” like family turmoil.
Yeah, if things had gone a different way, I can totally see how my family might have had holidays like this.
I wish I could say this is a fantastic film, about upper crust families and all their dirty little secrets, and how they work through them in some meaningful way for the audience, but alas, it doesn’t really go that way. Some people hate those kind of films; the ones that put you through the ringer and then don’t wrap it all up in a tidy bow at the end. Cold Turkey is one of these films. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Life is messy, there are conflicts, and sometimes those conflicts don’t get wrapped up in one explosive evening. But here we don’t get enough depth to the conflicts. We hear why people are angry, they yell, but no one gets any kind of real answers or resolutions. We don’t really get any logical reason why these characters shouldn’t just stop putting up with each other. Maybe some families just weren’t meant to have holidays together.
The occasional inconsistency appears in contradictions like, all of the siblings seem to revere Poppy as this beloved father, yet his faults are made clear. He cheated on his daughter’s mother, numerous times. Daughters Lindsay and Nina, played by Sonya Walger and Alicia Witt, respectively, as well as his son Jacob (Ashton Holmes), also mention that Poppy was pretty distant as a parent. That seemed off to me – to still act like things are all warm and fuzzy, even when they clearly are not. If we were given some indication that they were all just putting up facades, well then it would have made more sense, but they didn’t imply that. It just felt confusing and illogical. And so does a realization where it’s revealed that Poppy tells things to Nina when clearly she is the last person that would keep them to herself.
Yet, despite some of my other misgivings, I really like Alicia Witt here. She gets most of the great scenes and creates the most pathos. Yes, I said ‘pathos’. It’s Smarty-Pants Film School Word Day! But it’s true. All of Poppy’s other children seem to be less likeable. But Nina, though she is the incendiary catalyst that exposes everybody’s deep secrets, ends up being the most fully developed character that you actually get feels about. And it’s not the fault of the actors. They all do a solid job. Points also go to Cheryl HInes as Poppy’s wife. Overall, I think it could have used a little more fleshing out of the script.
I do have to say that I really liked the way it was shot. The location they used as the Turner house was great. Lots of hallways – almost labyrinthian. They use a hand-held camera to follow a person through the house as they go from one set up to the next and it was a rather engaging way for writer/director Will Slocombe to move things along.
Cold Turkey Feels more like just an exercise in character study of a family in full dysfunction mode. But mostly it just doesn’t provide enough insight into the emotional madness of these seemingly proper, upper class people. Yes, there were things I enjoyed here, but maybe a bit of fleshing out the characters and stiuations would have been helpful. Cold Turkey gets two and a half kittenhands. But if it turns up on cable or Netflix, watch it for Alicia Witt in particular.
~ Neil T. Weakley, your average movie-goer, thinking this feels like the kind of film Woody Allen would make.