Review of The Family Stone (2005) by Bryan W — 24 Dec 2009

This really seems to be a film of comprised entirely of half-assed ideas. Characters like a deaf, gay brother of a white liberal family that has a black lover come across more like plot devices than people while most of the stupid dialogue falls into the worst pitfalls of the 'deep' conversations of romantic comedies. You can practically feel the actors choking out some of the lines.

Worse than that, the 'romantic' plots, which here take a back seat to the family issues and become thin subplots, are given awful exposition and have not nearly earned their gravitas by the end of the film. Not only does Claire Danes not emerge as a legitimate love interest, she doesn't even have the screen time to register a personality.

Diane Keaton manages to muster some respectability, and the writing hits a wonderful peak in the plot-device laden dinner conversation. Nevertheless, the film cannot be followed because it's more a compilation of scenes relying on your ability to connect the dots for the romantic comedy formula than a contiguous whole.