Amazon.co.uk Review
For anyone who views holiday gatherings with equal parts joy and dread,
The Family Stone offers plenty of comedy to identify with. Writer-director Thomas Bezucha's slapstick premise begins when Everett (Dermot Mulroney) brings his fiancé Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) home to meet his family for Christmas. It's an instant disaster when parents Sybil (Diane Keaton) and Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) agree with their gay, deaf son Thad (Ty Giordano, who is actually hearing impaired), pot-smoking son Ben (Luke Wilson) and daughters Amy (Rachel McAdams) and Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) that Meredith is way too uptight to be welcomed into their family. Meredith recruits her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to help her thaw the Stone family cold front, and after building a solid emotional foundation for his holiday comedy, Bezucha starts to stack the deck with plot developments that, while heartwarming, border on the absurd. You either go with the movie's flow or you don't, and with this appealing cast (featuring some really nice work by Keaton, Nelson, Parker and Danes) it's easy to forgive Bezucha's unlikely blend of yuletide cheer, petty animosities, and romantic tables turned in the blink of an eye. Toss in a case of terminal illness and you've got a sad-happy tearjerker that works in spite of itself. If you don't recognize at least part of your own holiday clan in
The Family Stone, you probably haven't been paying attention. --
Jeff Shannon
Synopsis
Destined to be a classic, Thomas Bezucha's dazzling dramedy, THE FAMILY STONE, manages to be both warm-hearted and sentimental while possessing a razor-sharp hilarious mean streak. The fairly conventional story centres on Sarah Jessica Parker's uptight career woman, Meredith, and her run-in with the eponymous Stone family (one wonders which came first, the title or the script). With her permanently pursed lips and severe bun, SJP looks and acts the anti-Carrie Bradshaw here as, armed with cell phone and business suit collection, she gears up to meet her fiance's oddball family, a tight-knit, colourful clan who border on bohemian. Matriarch Sybil (Diane Keaton) and patriarch Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) are a loving couple whose diverse children are clearly intimate and respectful progeny. When Meredith's humourless aura infects the homestead, it is mom Sybil and sister Amy (Rachel McAdams), sensing a romance mismatch and attack her venomously, sparking a tete-a-tete-a-tete between three fiesty females. While this Battle Royale wages, dramatic subplots brew in the backdrop, one involving the deaf and gay brother Thad's desire to adopt a child, and the other a rather devastating secret on the verge of exposure. It is in the emergence of Meredith's refreshingly calm and breezy younger sister Julie (Claire Danes), entering the film with a dramatic fall from a bus exit, that brings all conflict to a head.
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