Some Traditions Are Meant to Change

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MOVIE REVIEWS
The Family Recipe
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Genre: Comedy, Family
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 36m
Director(s): Karl Ryan Erikson
Writer(s): Karl Ryan Erikson
Cast: Stacey Van Gorder, Chris Connell, Caroline Digan, Ethan Fisher, Benjamin Erikson, Larky Barnes, Cheryl McClendon, Michael P.J. Marston, Merritt Reid, Jackie McCarthy, Gina Marie Rodriguez
Where to Watch: TBD

RAVING REVIEW: An attempt at perfection is Alison Mitchell’s first mistake. Thanksgiving hasn’t even begun when THE FAMILY RECIPE starts piling on the responsibilities; there’s a very specific kind of comedy that comes from watching someone cling harder to a plan just because everyone around her is making it impossible. Writer/director Karl Ryan Erikson’s feature debut understands the anxiety behind hosting a family holiday almost as well as it understands the affection behind it all. Nobody has to be flat out “mean” for Thanksgiving to become a disaster. Sometimes it only takes relatives shoved into one house, children being children, a husband making a mistake, and a cherished recipe book disappearing when it’s needed most.

Stacey Van Gorder plays Alison, the increasingly overwhelmed center of the Mitchell family, as she’s determined to get this gathering right. The holiday carries more emotion than any normal meal ever would. Traditions and recipes connect Alison to her late mother, and recreating them becomes less about serving dinner than preserving something she doesn’t feel ready to lose. That turns every mishap into another threat to an ideal version of Thanksgiving that probably never existed the way she remembers it.

Erikson builds outward from Alison, allowing her to remain the center while the rest of the family fills out. Her husband, Gary (Chris Connell), means well; unfortunately, he has a talent for making things worse, while the children, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and other relatives gradually fill up the house until privacy and quiet become distant memories. Everyone has a different expectation of what the day should be, and Alison is somehow responsible for making all of those versions coexist at the same time.

You can feel the influences of PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES, THE GREAT OUTDOORS, and CHRISTMAS VACATION without THE FAMILY RECIPE becoming a collection of borrowed ideas or cliches. The comedy comes from family members irritating one another in ways that feel like years of back-and-forth annoyance. Anyone who has survived a large holiday gathering will recognize at least one person here.

Van Gorder has the hardest job because Alison could become exhausting pretty quickly. Her need for control is funny until it isn’t, and the film gradually reveals how much grief and pressure sit underneath it. Van Gorder makes the escalation believable. Alison doesn’t wake up in a bad mood. She gets there one inconvenience at a time, smiling through problems until the smile stops working. Her best scenes are when comedy and genuine frustration occupy the same space. Alison knows, on some level, that the world won’t end if Thanksgiving dinner isn’t perfect, yet knowing that doesn’t diminish the importance she’s attached to the tradition.

Chris Connell works well against her as Gary because he isn’t some useless parody of a husband whose incompetence exists solely to make Alison suffer. He screws up. He also loves his wife and recognizes, sometimes later than he should, when the situation has moved beyond something that can be fixed with another joke.

Erikson clearly enjoys allowing every branch of the family to bring a different problem into the house. Larky Barnes portrays Grandpa Tim with the expedited Grandpa level of mischief, while Cheryl McClendon’s Grandma Margo provides a calmer counterweight. Ethan Fisher gives Andrew the adolescent discomfort of being old enough to see the absurdity around him while remaining powerless to escape it. The younger children all have their own smaller catastrophes, and the mix of extra relatives ensures that Alison never gets the breathing room she so desperately needs.

Erikson knows when to stop treating Alison’s distress as a growing joke. That shift is really important. There could easily have been a version of this movie, interested only in chaos, that could spend 90 minutes humiliating her and calling it entertainment. THE FAMILY RECIPE eventually asks why she placed so much pressure on herself in the first place. The idea of living up to the past provides the answer. The movie isn’t arguing that every ritual must be protected exactly as it’s always been. In fact, Alison’s attachment to getting everything right becomes part of what prevents her from enjoying the people sitting in front of her. A recipe handed down from someone who is gone can be important without becoming a set of instructions for how every future Thanksgiving has to look. That ultimately gives the third act what makes the film work so well.

Erikson clearly misses a kind of mainstream comedy built around families and human behavior, but THE FAMILY RECIPE doesn’t argue that movies were just better decades ago. He borrows their willingness to spend time with people whose problems are small one by one, but all add up to the people experiencing them. There’s no masked villain to defeat. No family fortune secretly depends on discovering a twist. Nobody needs to save the world. They need to get through a Thanksgiving meal together and come out the other side.

THE FAMILY RECIPE was made in New Jersey with a predominantly local cast and crew, using practical locations rather than pretending to have endless resources.

Nicholas Pietroniro’s cinematography makes good use of the crowded house, often allowing multiple characters to occupy the frame rather than cutting everything into isolated reactions. The framing is an interesting choice for a comedy like this, giving the ensemble room to exist together and letting the entire group become part of the joke. Holiday movies can become so desperate to reassure audiences that family is everything that they erase the reasons people find gatherings difficult in the first place. Erikson allows these people to be irritating. Some traditions are exhausting. Some conversations should never have started. Love doesn’t prevent relatives from driving one another crazy. The affection survives anyway.

Erikson financed the project independently, worked with his wife, Caroline, as producer, brought local artists into the production, and deliberately modeled the presentation after an era when theatrical comedies were sold as events that audiences could experience together. That philosophy is visible in the finished movie far more than in some generic by-the-numbers comedies from bigger studios.

THE FAMILY RECIPE doesn’t reinvent holiday comedy; its structure is part of its appeal. We know dinner will go wrong. We know Alison will eventually reach a breaking point. We know all the fighting is unlikely to end with the Mitchells really disowning one another. Erikson makes those expected moments matter by keeping the family feel like the ones we all have, with enough sincerity that the destination isn’t the reason to watch. The pleasure comes from seeing exactly how this group gets there.

Alison begins Thanksgiving trying to preserve a list of recipes. By the end, what matters is understanding that a family can survive changing one. That may be a familiar lesson, but THE FAMILY RECIPE serves it with enough warmth, aggravation, embarrassment, and genuine feeling to make the meal worth staying for. There’s something here that takes you back to that place we all remember; those specific moments may push us to the brink, but in the end most of us wouldn’t change them for anything.

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[photo courtesy of LUCKY ELEPHANT FILMS]

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