The Family Stone

Synopsis: Successful son Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) returns home for the holidays with his uptight Wall-Street fiancé, Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) to introduce her to his family. As nervous as she is to meet the tribe, she is unprepared for just how bad they can be. Although she is tough enough to deal with the sharks of The Big Apple, this family's hostility reduces her to calling on her sister Julie (Claire Danes) for moral support. Julie's arrival only makes things more complicated as she is wholeheartedly embraced by the entire family, and worse still, by Everett, before events twist to a fairytale sugar-coated ending.

The Family Stone is a Christmas story about family, relationships and life. Supposedly it's about a dysfunctional family but unfortunately it's more a dysfunctional film filled with thinly sketched, not very likeable, snobby but well-meaning people trying ever-so-hard to be politically correct, too often and in too many ways.

Julie (Claire Danes) arrives fairly late in the game to rescue her sister who, feeling ostracised from this freewheeling brood of Lefties, has moved to the local hostelry. Everett is allocated the task of meeting her bus, and as she steps out, wham --- he falls in love with the blond, sensitive, artistic dream-girl. Luckily the already-humiliated and unwanted Miranda is simultaneously shown sympathy by laidback (and perhaps most likeable) Ben (Luke Wilson). Ben's attention and genuine care catalyses a sudden and complete character turnaround in Miranda, and yes, you've got it, they too fall in love and we have a neat swapping of partners, which is fully embraced and even encouraged by the family. Luckily, too, the family "stone" - Grandma's precious engagement ring, is saved from being handed down to the finger of a mismatched daughter-in-law.

We also have an adopted, deaf, gay son in relationship with a black man in Thad (Tyrone Giordano) who is in fact almost characterless. He does, however provide the prime vehicle for carrying the film's big 'issue' as well as the nail in the coffin for Miranda's relationship with the family.

In case you thought that was not enough, adding a dark undertone to all the drama, comedy and romance of this reunion, is the tragic secret that matriarch Sybil (Diane Keaton), who, other than needing an afternoon nap,seems just fine, is losing her battle with cancer, signalling this as the last family holiday together.

We are asked to "feel the love" but instead I felt distaste for this Christmas turkey, in which it is hard to like, let alone love, any of the characters. Although director/ writer Thomas Bezucha (director of the gay comedy Big Eden, 2000) seems intent on using this film as a vehicle to espouse tolerance and shove down our throats the view that gay-is-more-normal-than-'normal', I found the characters intolerably intolerant in their demand for tolerance and understanding. Perhaps if this film had played with our emotional/socio-political responses by making us feel more empathetic with the supposedly prejudiced Meredith than with the free-thinking Stone's (as I did), it might have been effective. But as it is, it's not.

Overall, I found The Family Stone contrived and overstuffed - an unenjoyable and annoying addition to this year's obligatory helping of Christmas spirit.

 

 

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