Product Description

Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, and Rachel McAdams lead an all-star cast in The Family Stone. Join the eccentric Stone family for a holiday gathering filled with unexpected surprises. Before the festivities are over, love affairs will unravel, new ones will form, outrageous secrets will be revealed and the family will come together like never before.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2973 in DVD
• Brand: Family
• Released on: 2006-05-02
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .15 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.com
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

Customer Reviews

middleaged baby boomers behaving worse than kids
This tries to be a comedy and it is if you are able to laugh at an elderly mother (Diane Keaton) spouting filthy language. The plot features a man bringing his fiance home for Christmas to meet the family. The sad part is the people are all middleaged, but behave worse than kids. The groom to be's brother falls in love with the fiance after observing her drunk and dirty dancing. His receding hairline reminds us he is too old for this nonsense. Next the groom to be falls in love with his fiance's sister. One wonders why he is smitten as the sister is masculine enough to compete in Roller Derby. And how many comedies end with mommy dying of cancer? As for political correctness the producers covered all their bases with one actor who is gay, handicapped and black. This is a movie I consider pathetic.

Worst movie I've recently seen till the bitter end...
My habit as of late has been to give a film at least 15 to 20 minutes before I either watch the entire thing, or just give up. Having a continuing stream of already seen or unseen on-demand digital choices, I try to the best of my abilities to keep up with films of a general genre, which I might be interested in. This eliminates a lot of genres actually, as I can't stand, in no particular order, horror/slasher films, "masterpiece theater-ish, British soap-operish" borefests, most heavily/quickly subtitled foreign movies (because of my failing eyesight), most westerns, and anything/everything remotely connected with Michael Bay.

Genres I generally favor, again in no particular order, are original or ground-breaking works from any time period, comedies and especially romantic comedies, intelligent and well done sci-fi flicks, and compelling and enlightening dramas, either based upon true-life stories or fictional ones. "The Family Stone" falls into my last category mentioned, that of fictional drama, and with the big name cast and at times fast-moving plot, this passed my 20 or so minute mark of being tolerable. And so I watched it till the end. An end which was most satisfying, simply because it WAS the end of a terrible flick which I will never watch again.

I have always found it easier to write about films I have a favorable opinion of, whether classic, older movies, or newly discovered studio or independent, more recently produced gems. It's a lot tougher however, to write about films I've seen which I hated enough to bother trying to warn others with, what I hope will be a helpful review. This becomes especially difficult when it concerns a film, which engenders in people a sort of love/hate view. To cut to the chase of this review, I really hated this movie, and generally, here's why...

This is well cast with several big names and lesser knowns, most of which have been involved with much better works than this, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to watch it in the first place, and which I suspect, a lot of others were and are and will be. However, while all seem to give it a good effort, nothing can overcome, for me at least, the unbelievable characters (all of whom resemble no real human beings I've ever encountered), and the draw-by-numbers, unbelievable at every turn script and writing. It all starts out promising, the whole premise, the genre, the cast, and it is all done with very professional, technical quality and generally unobtrusive direction, but early on I was scratching my brain at why I should feel the least bit empathetic with the "family" and its various components. Which is what the film and the film's creators apparently want viewers to take away from all of this. In that respect, this is a miserable misfire.

The "tagline" of this film upon its release was "Feel The Love." How ironic because the "FAMILY STONE" the supposedly "uptight, conservative" Sarah Jessica Parker meets up with when her fiancé coaxes her to an Xmas visit to HIS folks's home, seemed to me nothing more than a bunch of unlikable, "neo-liberal," reactionary, upper middle class, intolerant, politically correct to the point of nausea, snobbish morons.

Politically, I consider myself far, far to the left, but this movie really distorts generally held ideas of the "left" and "liberal" leaning folks out there, and does a real disservice to both. The "working title" for this production was called "Hating Her." The "her" obviously being Ms. Parker's character, "Meredith Morton." Yet, this whole premise is why the film fails. Because Meredith's character is really not political at all, but just a lazy, convenient poor-scriptwriting miscreant, one of whose major SINS against "the family" seems to be her habit of clearing her throat when nervous! Great reason to hate her! Or her raising misguided but civil, honest issues at the holiday dinner table, where she is ridiculously crucified for it. Up to and including the end, I felt so much more sympathy for her than the B-word mother (Keaton) who supposedly suffers and eventually dies (but by then, I almost cheered). Bad writing, bad, bad, bad writing.

First, there really is no establishing development of Meredith's character except for a few surface features, none of which are important or revealing. Second, given this, there is no real establishing development of the "family" and its dynamics and conflicts, let alone any believable explanation of their rather mean-spirited and hateful "eccentricities." Third, the filmmakers seem throughout till the very pretentious end, are asking the viewer to NOT identify with a likeable villain, Sarah, and IDENTIFY with a truly unlikable group, the family. It all eventually makes no sense at all.

Throughout, my main continuing thought was from the beginning, WHY exactly does most of the "family" here HATE "HER?" In fact, if anything, after the requisite 15-20 minutes, I found myself asking, why in the world would Sarah Jessica Parker's character want ANYTHING to do with this family of creeps? Absurdly, various reasons are thrown about for the family character's "hateful" and contrived "behaviors," but by the film's completely over-the-top, sappy, totally illogical and pandering finish, it was all too late. The way all of this resolves, with double one-night stands replacing seemingly established character involvements all just adds to the mess this movie is, from beginning to end.

A really, really, really bad movie. Spend a couple of hours of your movie-viewing life on better than this junk. It's hard really to fit this into any genre, though it tries to alternately switch between comedy, drama, and romance. The only genre I will consign this to for future reference is that of really, really, really bad movies, which does its cast and production values a real shame.

Excellent addition to the Christmas Movie Collection
This movie is the perfect sweet, but not syrupy, holiday comedy. If you're looking for profound cinema, please look in a different category, but if you're looking for a fresh addition to your list of Christmas classics that you will enjoy watching over, and over, and over again, then THIS is an excellent choice!