April Burns (Holmes) is the black sheep of her family who has left suburbia for a Lower East Side tenement. To reconnect with her mother Joy (Patricia Clarkson) and father Jim (Oliver Platt) she invites them and her wisecracking brother (John Gallagher Jr.) and perfect sister (Alison Pill) for Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment and against their better judgment the Burnses pile up in the family station wagon pick up Grandma (Alice Drummond) and head to the big city from the