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The Family Stone Director: Thomas Bezucha Rated: M Now Screening 
'The Family Stone', like other generic Christmas fare, at all times stays well within the mediocre boundaries of politically correct emotionalism, in turn managing to both bore and annoy.
Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) is attempting to acclimatise his girlfriend and probable fiancee Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) to his provincial, petty family whilst staying with them over Christmas. Meredith, not exactly a capsule of perfection, is at first treated harshly by the thoroughly self-centric family who assume that Everett's life is within their whimsical jurisdiction and immediately take issue with the outsider, apparently because she is a little uptight and nervous (which is largely the product of their prying anyway). Most frighteningly snoopy is matriarch Sybil (Diane Keaton), an utterly repellent emasculator analogous in breed and effect to 'Big Nurse'. While it is clear the characters were intended to give the film its source of dramatic friction and humour, they are so abhorrent that the eventual attempt at sentiment-reversal - involving redemption and reconciliation - is unconvincing. Thomas Bezucha does not seem to have realised the repugnance of this domestic creation, a flaw that is so central it ends up adversely affecting most other parts of the film, particularly the all important conclusion. The only really coherent theme here is a sort of Christmassy ethnocentrism, with the family unit presented as that of primary legitimacy, and the holiday itself as of value primarily as a celebration of this socially dominant union. Even the minor progressive gesture of including a homosexual couple, one an African-American and the other with a hearing impediment, does little to allay classifications of narrowness, with the couple shown as achieving a seemingly higher and truer form of happiness when they form a family unit. Aggravating the problems arising from such a constricted focus is its lack of originality and irrelevance. Luke Wilson, as Ben, is a significant source of relief, his character being the only believable and likeable one and therefore the exclusive recipient of audience kindness when the necessarily uplifting conclusion imposes its presence and showers all in yuletide fortune.  |
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