Diane Keaton brings luster to Family Stone


With his observations about the clash between a tightly wound Manhattan careerist and her boyfriend’s loose-limbed New England clan, writer-director Thomas Bezucha puts a fresh slant on the dynamics of family-reunion Christmas movies. But “The Family Stone” spends too much time on unconvincing romantic-comedy contrivances to be consistently engaging.
Throughout the uneven film and its mixed bag of performances, the compelling point of focus is Diane Keaton’s smart, funny, spot-on natural portrait of the formidable Stone matriarch. Fans of the actress and of Sarah Jessica Parker, in her first major post-”Sex and the City” film role, will flock to the holiday offering, which should be a draw for older audiences and women.
Unfortunately, Parker is one of the actors who fares least well here. Fans looking for Carrie Bradshaw’s irreverence will find instead a multitasking, throat-clearing control freak. Parker does, however, deliver some strong moments late in the proceedings, when script mechanics release her character, Meredith, from the Stone family’s sacrificial altar.
The story unfolds over three days in an unidentified New England town, where Meredith and her boyfriend, Everett (Dermot Mulroney), visit his artsy mother and professor father (Craig T. Nelson, lending low-key strength). The deck is stacked against her: Everett’s outspoken younger sister Amy (Rachel McAdams), having already met Meredith, hates her. And Sybil (Keaton), a striking, casually dressed woman with a Susan Sontag-style shock of white hair, regards Meredith with a roll of the eyes and a sneer of disdain when she crosses the threshold in black power pumps that couldn’t be more out of place. Who wouldn’t feel intimidated?
Where Bezucha (whose other feature credit is the indie “Big Eden”) gets it right is in his clear-eyed depiction of the way ultra-tolerant, “open-minded” people can be utterly intolerant — and even delight in being mean, with McAdams and Keaton offering fine examples. But he layers his story with romantic alignments and realignments that all feel forced.
The roundelay begins when Meredith, under passive-aggressive siege, summons her sister to lend moral support. When Everett lays eyes on the luminous Julie (Claire Danes), as clear a contrast to the shrill Meredith as could be imagined, his mask of misery finally melts. Like Parker, Mulroney is constrained by a role that doesn’t quite parse. However mismatched Everett and Meredith may be, any couple this appearance-conscious would at least try not to look as downright miserable as these two do. And as successful businesspeople, they would know how to work a room somewhat better than they manage here.
But families have a way of laying low our best defenses, and as this gathering unravels, Meredith’s chief ally is not her boyfriend but his brother (Luke Wilson in one of the film’s best performances), a documentary film editor exuding a soulful — and cannabis-enhanced — serenity. Also seeing through Meredith’s brittle demeanor to her self-doubt is Nelson’s paterfamilias Kelly, providing counterpoint to Sybil and Amy’s drama for flash judgments.
Rounding out the brood are married, pregnant daughter Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) and youngest son Thad (Tyrone Giordano), perhaps Bezucha’s most loaded construct. Thad is gay and deaf, his partner (Brian White) is black, and they’re planning to adopt. All of which would be fine if Thad didn’t exist merely as a setup for the dinner-table debacle in which Meredith, speaking her mind, plants both feet firmly in mouth and proceeds to do a Riverdance.
It’s no wonder that Sybil is bracing herself against Everett’s request for the heirloom ring — the second meaning of the film’s title — that she had promised him for his intended, long before Meredith entered the picture. Keaton brings a bracing acerbity to Sybil, who reneges on that promise with an unapologetic, “Tough shit.” Although she’s not always likable, her toughness and honesty are her family’s life force.
The production has a suitably unfussy sheen, with Jane Ann Stewart’s production design and Shay Cunliffe’s costumes conveying the Stone home’s lived-in, bohemia-tinged comfort. New Jersey and Connecticut locations serve well as the snow-covered burg. A holiday-themed bonus awaits Keaton fans who stay to the end of the credits.—Agencies