Review of The Family Stone (2005) by Becky K — 22 Nov 2008

First of all, don't advertise your movie to be something that it's not. You go in watching the movie with certain expectations that ultimately fail.

Second of all, a movie touches people because they can either relate to the characters or they can see growth or improvement or change within the span of the movie. They made the main character (Sarah Jessica Parker) so uptight for most of the movie that you don't sympathise with her at all. Then the family is contradictinly seemingly perfect and welcoming and embracing of each other, and then incredibly cold and harsh to SJP that they don't appeal to you, either. The person you really DO sympathise with is Dermot Mulroney who's stuck in the middle, only to fall for SJP's sister after the first time meeting her while he's STILL dating SJP. And supposedly after one conversation and one night, he falls in love with Claire Danes and SJP conveniently falls in love with Luke Wilson. Oh, and Rachel McAdams, whose icy attitude towards SJP seemed refreshingly genuine, all of a sudden poofs into a softie once she gets her Christmas present. RIDICULOUS.

The movie was too painful to be comedic (until the very end when they try to smash all of the comedic physical slapstick into the end with the light-hearted music after 2 hours of heaviness). I understand that there were different themes going on (the mother's sickness, the family closeness, conflict with the new gf, conflict with the new gf's sister), but it was just kinda slapped together and in the end I didn't care much that the mother was gone... it was more of a "Yeah, she has cancer, of course she's not there the next year" type of feeling.