Home for the Holidays (1995)

November is the obvious month to release a movie about a single mom (Hunter) who's suddenly jobless and must face Thanksgiving with her dysfunctional yet madcap family. But will video audiences be drawn to it in the middle of spring? The timing is unfortunate, since Home for the Holidays succeeds as a reassuring proxy for what we all go through, and why we want to go through it only once a year. Director Jodie Foster's paean to the joys of family love, and to the other kinds of love that precede it, is generally sweet, though its few attempts at whimsy would be effective as doorstops. And when watching it on video, you can repeat like a mantra, ''November is still far, far away.''