Home for the Holidays strikes such a perfect note that it's hard at first to realize what an impressive balancing act it is.

Foster directs the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment.

Foster keeps the party hopping, although more dark humor would have helped before she winds it down with sentiment and bromides.

Foster has whipped the actors into the sort of comic frenzy usually reserved for farce, and the ready-for-anything energy serves the material well.

From a sharp, jaundiced script by W.D. Richter ("Buckaroo Banzai"), Jodie Foster has directed a poisoned paean to the great American tradition of torturous family gatherings.

There are few surprises on offer here; the comedy is engaging without ever being side-splitting, the dramatic conflict convinces without going overboard, and the denouement, feelgood as it is, can be spotted a long way in the distance.

Ms. Foster and the screenwriter, W. D. Richter, have given this film some peculiar mood swings, so that it starts out zanily and winds down to a wistful note.

Overall, the movie stresses the more painful and awkward moments; moments that might be classified as "heartwarming" are rare. This results in a very cynical tone and I suspect that was not the desired effect.

Foster's film offers its fair share of laughs, although most come at the expense of "easy mark" characters. Dramatically, however, the movie is only a step up from a flop.

The movie faithfully records the rivalries among the various members of a fractious Baltimore family, but it never really attempts to resolve any of the internecine conflicts. In that sense, it's less ambitious than many a TV series.

What results is a film with some bright spots but whose effect is finally as muddled and wearying as the event itself sometimes is.

But director Jodie Foster and writer W.D.Richter aren't content to serve the usual Planes, Trains and Cliches at their Thanksgiving feast. With her keen actor's instincts, Foster piles on plenty for her terrific cast to chew on and for us to savor. [03 Nov 1995, Pg.01.D]

Foster, working from a patchy, meandering script by W.D. Richter, produces scene after scene of rudderless banter. The movie is all asides, all nattering; the actors seem lost in their busy, fractious shticks.

But Foster is unable to give the episodic, fragmented film a coherent feel; her prosaic, sometimes irritating picture proceeds scene by scene, with the requisite climaxes and anticlimaxes along the bumpy road.