Honest sentiment involving an old photo of a pregnant woman cannot override the thoroughly fabricated feel of "The Family Stone," a watchable, thin, domestic comedy about a holiday reunion that is more cruel than cozy.
Wilting in the long shadows of the riotous "Meet the Parents" and the perceptive "Royal Tenenbaums" among 21st-century reunion-catastrophe comedies, "The Family Stone" is a bit too tepid and predictable despite having nary a moment that feels organic or believable. Derivativeness defeats it.
It's set almost completely over a couple of days in the frosty New England home of the Stones, a Bohemian family presided over by professor-father Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) and, especially, his flinty wife Sybil (Diane Keaton).
They're proud of their five adult children, all of whom partake in an esprit de corps that emanates from writer-director Thomas Bezucha. The offspring are Everett (Dermot Mulroney), pregnant Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser), idle Ben (Luke Wilson), aggressively competitive Amy (Rachel McAdams) and deaf, gay Thad (Ty Giordano).
Equally welcome is Thad's life partner, Patrick (Brian White). And even the townie Brad (Paul Schneider).
But for the Christmas visit being chronicled, they have their collective blades drawn and pointed at Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker), whom Everett brings home with plans of becoming engaged.
She's an uptight, compulsively chatty Manhattan career woman overly attached to her cell phone, and who nervously and idiosyncratically clears her throat, a habit evident only at the screenplay's comic convenience.
Everett wants to give Meredith his late grandmother's cherished engagement ring, a family stone apparently designated for his use one day. No one else thinks Meredith deserves it.
Because the Stones gang up on Meredith and treat her inhospitably, she becomes to us a sympathetic victim.
What makes the film strange in an unproductive way is that Bezucha allows the Stones to be so fun-loving and affectionate toward each other that, coupled with Meredith's victimization, we're too conflicted to enjoy the central situation -- the comeuppance of an ill-fitting New Yorker.
We get no sense from Parker's performance what Everett sees in her and why he thinks she might fit into a family to which he's obviously bound for life. Her hair and clothes are severe, her face and body rigid.
While it's true that many folks fail to prepare outsiders as to how best to navigate family gatherings, Everett's negligence in this case borders on the heartless. Besides, this isn't a case where opposites would be likely to attract.
The arrival of Meredith's instantly accepted sister Julie (Claire Danes) is among the contrivances that won't wash.
So is the disclosure of fatal illness, which is a tonally dishonest revelation, given how unkindly the ailing character behaves toward a guest.
Never quite funny and too-seldom seriously dramatic for what it tries to do, "The Family Stone" occupies a middle zone -- the movie that strives and comes up short.
Too bad. The use of Christmas-card settings for the opening credits, amplified by the song "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" and clips from "Meet Me in St. Louis," including the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," engender a Norman Rockwellish warmth the movie doesn't support.
Details
'The Family Stone' PG-13 for some sexual content including dialogue and drug references
