"Though outwardly possessing everything a suburban family from the early '70s could want, inwardly the Hoods are on thin ice. Their dysfunctional relationships reach the breaking point during the 1973 Thanksgiving. Patriarch Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) seldom communicates with his wife Elena (Joan Allen) anymore. Frustrated, and lonely, Elena is on the verge of an emotional meltdown that none of the many self-help books she reads can stop, while Ben copes by having an affair with their neighbor Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver). Dutifully home for the holidays, Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) is a 16-year old prep student who would have rather remained at school so he could drink and make time with a certain girl. His 14-year-old sister Wendy (Christina Ricci) is exceptionally bright and is obsessed with the Watergate scandal; she is also very curious about sex and is unafraid to experiment with Janey's young teenage boys Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd). Once the family is back home, they are all busy enough to avoid communicating with each other, but the family ice begins to crack when Ben is visiting Janey and finds Wendy messing around with Mikey. Elena finds out, deduces that her husband is cheating and is shattered. An unusually bad ice storm forces the family into a crisis situation."