Family Stone, The

Feel the love.

Holiday gatherings give screenwriters ideal circumstances in which to portray the comic and/or dramatic interaction within large families when they come together for one big special occasion. It’s even better if that family is eccentric or dysfunctional – and better still when an outsider is introduced into the group and quickly realises that he or she is way out of sync with this curious company.

The Family Stone provides the kind of comic situation that delivers on all counts. The Stones are a bohemian New England family who unite for the Christmas season and are thrown into turmoil when the eldest son, Everett (Dermot Mulroney), comes home from Manhattan with his girlfriend, Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker), a tightly wound, high strung, immaculately groomed career woman whose controlling, rigid personality brings awkwardness, confusions and hostility to the Stone household.

At the heart of the family is its outspoken, strong-willed matriarch, Sybil (Diane Keaton) whose husband, Kelly (Craig T Nelson) is an offbeat, laid back college professor. Everett’s brother, Ben (Luke Wilson) is an unpredictable, sometimes mischievous film editor who lives on the West Coast. Amy (Rachel McAdams), the guys’ sister, has an honesty that borders on meanness and she displays the most open hostility toward Meredith. Completing the clan are two other siblings, Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) and Thad (Ty Giordano), the youngest son who is both deaf and gay.

Trying to relate to the Stones, Meredith instead finds herself making matters worse and she enlists the help of her sister, the much less uptight Julie (Claire Danes) who arrives to give her moral support… but brings, instead, more complications.