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A Family Thing

1996 · 109 min

A warm, bittersweet journey of discovery and reconciliation, balancing raw emotion with gentle humor and a sense of hope.

Directed by
Richard Pearce
Genres
Comedy, Drama
Tagline
With family, everything is relative.
Overview
Earl Pilcher Jr. runs an equipment rental outfit in Arkansas, lives with his wife and kids and parents, and rarely takes off his gimme cap. His mother dies, leaving a letter explaining he's not her natural son, but the son of a Black woman who died in childbirth; plus, he has a half brother Ray, in Chicago, she wants him to visit. Earl makes the trip, initially receiving a cold welcome from Ray and Ray's son, Virgil. His birth mother's sister, Aunt T., an aged and blind matriarch, takes Earl in tow and insists that the family open up to him.

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Directed by
Richard Pearce
Genres
Comedy, Drama
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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • warmstrength 2 of 3
  • melancholicstrength 2 of 3
  • earneststrength 2 of 3
  • tensestrength 1 of 3
Pacing
measured, 2 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
engaged, 3 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • family
  • identity
  • race
  • grief
  • redemption
Places
  • small town
  • big city
  • home
Era
contemporary
Audience
adult
Form
None
Content intensity
  • Gore none
  • Language mild
  • Violence mild
  • Sex mild
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action2
Horror0
Humour5
Realism8
Romance1
Tension4
Darkness5
Complexity5
Emotional weight7

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Streaming data from JustWatch.TMDB

Details

Genres
comedy, drama
Directed by
Richard Pearce
Written by
Billy Bob Thornton, Tom Epperson
Starring
Robert Duvall, James Earl Jones, Michael Beach, Irma P. Hall, Grace Zabriskie, Regina Taylor, David Keith, Xander Berkeley
Music
Charles Gross
Cinematography
Fred Murphy
Runtime
109 min
Country
United States of America
Languages
English

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