You're either a house-in-the-suburbs kind of person or you're not (though I have witnessed -- God help me -- the tragic conversion of die-hard city slickers into Wal-Mart-loving moms and pops once some alleged biological clock starts ticking). The Family Man tries hard to paint a pretty picture of poor-but-proud family life -- the story takes place during the holidays, when even the staunchest advocates of singlehood get a little blue -- but chances are that whatever your current status, this film won't make you long for the life you don't have.
Nic Cage is Jack, a successful, well-dressed businessman with a really cool Manhattan apartment and the freedom to pick up beautiful blondes on Christmas Eve. A would-be convenience-store robber -- an angel? the devil? where did this guy come from, anyway? -- intervenes, and Jack wakes up the next morning with his old college girlfriend lying on his stomach and two runny-nosed kids jumping on the bed. For reasons left unexplained, Jack has been thrust into this world, with no knowledge of where he works, where his kids go to school, or even what kind of car he drives, for an indeterminate amount of time. After realizing that he can't go back to his old life just yet, Jack fumbles through his new daily routine -- complete with minivan and blue-collar job -- convincingly enough to not raise the suspicions of his wife, Kate (Téa Leoni).
(Not much seems to rattle her, in fact, not even Jack screaming vitriol such as "How could you let me give up on my dreams like this?" in the middle of a department store. Fun fact: Only one side of this husband-wife duo is realistically drawn. Guess which?)
His daughter knows that something's up, however, and once they get through an awkward "You're-not-my-real-daddy" conversation (she thinks he's an alien and seems OK with that), she helps him out -- in a charming widdle-goil, never-corrected-in-her-life voice -- with information such as how to change a diaper and where her little brother goes to day care. But just as Jack learns to love his new life of middle-class drudgery (of course), he's yanked back to the old fabulous one, though now aching for the dream girl he left behind 13 years ago. He finds her and, well, though the ending is ambiguous, it seems that, as in all fairy tales, love will conquer all.