The Family Stone - Palm Beach Post movie review

'Family Stone' trods familiar ground with a few new twists

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

If you had to sum up The Family Stone in one word, that word would be contrived. But what movie isn't a series of contrivances, except perhaps some documentaries?

Yes, the events that happen in the Stone household on one snowy New England Christmas are far-fetched when they are not merely improbable. But there is little harm in trying to go along with them, and more than a few rewards if you happen to succeed. Or maybe the movie has gotten me into a charitable holiday frame of mind. Nah.

20th Century Fox

'The Family Stone'

B-

The verdict: A contrived, but affecting family comedy pitting the liberals against an uptight outsider.

Director: Thomas Bezucha
Starring: Dermot Mulroney, Diane Keaton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams
Run time: 102 minutes
Release date: Dec. 16, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content including dialogue, and drug references.
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Unlike most films about families, the Stones are anything but dysfunctional. They are a large clan of well-adjusted, affectionate, candid, middle-class liberals with a gay-embracing, racially color-blind outlook on the world. They would surely describe themselves as highly tolerant of others, until eldest son Everett (Dermot Mulroney) brings home his imminent fiancee, a high-strung, cellphone-dependent, habitually throat-clearing prig named Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker).

Suddenly this seemingly benign brood closes ranks and turns into a bunch of rude, inhospitable hate-mongers. Younger daughter Amy (Rachel McAdams, Wedding Crashers) is openly hostile to Meredith; stoner brother Ben (Luke Wilson) is initially mortified that she will soon be in the family; and even gracious matriarch Sybil (Diane Keaton) refuses to give Everett a family heirloom ring she had promised him on the occasion of his wedding.

But to properly manipulate us, director-writer Thomas Bezucha has to carefully calibrate our sympathies. So, just as we begin feeling sorry for Meredith, she lets slip some bigoted remarks about homosexuals at the dinner table, in front of the Stones' youngest son, Thad — who is gay, hearing-impaired and in a committed relationship with an African-American named Patrick.

Now that we have been turned off to Meredith, Bezucha then hatches an improbable series of couple realignments involving Everett, Meredith, Meredith's sister Julie (Claire Danes), Ben, Amy and a paramedic she once dated. Romance is clearly in the air, even if some of these match-ups seem highly unlikely. Still, you may find yourself saying, "At least no one is dying" — and then a character reveals a fatal disease.

That The Family Stone works at all is pretty amazing and much of that is directly attributable to the cast, notably Keaton as a crusty ex-hippie and Craig T. Nelson as her exasperated professor husband. Parker allows herself to be seen as rigid and unlikable; Wilson gets typecast as an irresponsible West Coast slacker; and McAdams is adorable even as she remains mischievously malignant.

There is a tradition of family comedies in which the central love interest gets persuaded not to marry an inappropriate fiance. Think of You Can't Take It With You or Auntie Mame, for example. The Family Stone is not on their level, but at least that seems like the company it aspires to keep.