Review of The Family Stone (2005) by Steven V — 02 Jul 2009

The prodigal son Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) brings his conservative and bigot fiancée Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) to spend Christmas holidays with his very closed family. Meredith Morton is coldly and hostilely welcomed by the family Stone, and feeling completely uncomfortable, she decides to call her sister Julie Morton (Claire Danes) to stay with her.

Along Christmas, revelations and new feelings are disclosed. The Family Stone is not a bad movie but could be better and better. The story is very real, showing many credible characters and developing them perfectly, considering that this movie has a running time of only 103 minutes.

However, the screenplay is quite confused and without a clear definition of its genre, oscillating between a heavy drama and a romantic comedy. The cinematography is very beautiful and the performances are excellent, with the exception of Dermot Mulroney, who is totally miscast, looking like a gangster and never like the romantic pair of Sarah Jessica Parker or Claire Danes.

Another negative point is this politically correct and fashionable gay thing that Hollywood is exporting in their movies. With the intention of being commercial, now we have gays with son celebrating Christmas with members of a prejudicial family that do not accept the fiancée of their son, but for whom is absolutely perfect their Caucasian gay son have a black mate and a black adopted son later in a total lack of coherence.