THE
FAMILY STONE: A ROLLING SEASONAL ROMP
By
Erica Hector Vital
Red Rock Review
ericavital@cox.net
ericav@theflickchicks.com
Highbrow, freewheeling chaos reigns in the rambling Upstate home of Kelly
and Sybil Stone, the patri and matriarch of director-screenwriter Thomas
Bezucha's newly released drama-comedy The Family Stone.
Classic novels line the shelves, family portraits are beautifully displayed.
We can smell the pine, taste the turkey, the first flush of snow graces the
lawn. Yet in the midst of what should be the perfect holiday portrait, right
before the family bursts in and frenzied, endearing scenes of family
slapstick begin, Diane Keaton as Sybil Stone, becoming an even more classy
and classic beauty as she ages, takes a moment to herself that in its
posture of grief and resignation resembles the moment a prizefighter takes
before going into the ring. In Keaton's momentary silence lies the promise
of a rich inner life for this character. Here in the midst of abundance,
fire in the fireplace, Land Rover pulling up in the drive, broadshouldered
and adoring husband, Craig T. Nelson as Kelly Stone, in the next room, is a
woman deep enough to remain unsatisfied, a woman who for all intents and
purposes has arrived and is still left wanting, a woman who in her quiet
moments can stare into the embers of a life and feel compelled to ask, “Is
that all there is?”
Screenwriter Thomas Bezucha's choice in giving us quiet before the comedic
storm briefly forecasts a depth to the comedy to come, offering subtle
insight into the ebb and flow of life that meaningful comedy can deliver.
The Family Stone is a smart, snappy dialogue and character driven holiday
film in the tradition of As Good as I Gets, Jerry McQuire, and the classic,
1945 Barbara Stanwyck comedy Christmas In Connecticut. So I was disappointed
to find that the incomparable Keaton as the unabashed mother Stone is not
mulling over the meaning of one's bourgeois existence. It is not even that
old devil called love again that sinks her into this funk from which she
admirably rallies back. It's the old dramaturge's deus ex machina of
illness, think Terms of Endearment, think Love Story.
If there is nothing original in this conceit, the cast of characters,
centered about a clean cut, clench jawed Dermot Mulroney as eldest son
Everett Stone and a blade thin, beautifully turned out Sarah Jessica Parker
as Everett's fiancee, Meredith, is fiercely eclectic.
There is the gay youngest boy, Tyrone Giordano as Thadd Stone who arrives
with his longtime partner Patrick (Brian White) who upon arrival get busy in
the kitchen, a part of a family that regards the exceptional and the
unexpected as a determining feature of who they are. There is the oldest
daughter, Susannah, a loving mother to one precocious Stone grandchild and
expecting another, and there is the highly successful Everett due to arrive
with the fiancée the Stones are prepared to hate. It is the middle child,
Ben Stone, a deliberately obtuse and beguiling Luke Wilson who will become
the hero to Sarah Jessica Parker's uptight Vassar educated damsel.
Keaton herself is a sparring, bawdy, earth-mother; an intellect who is not
afraid to cut through the morass of social niceties to get to the roots of
an offspring's angst. When youngest daughter Amy Stone, played with catty
poignancy by Rachel McAdams shrugs off memories of an old boyfriend, Keaton
as the Mother Stone, lets newcomer Sarah Jessica Parker in on the
particulars. "Brad Stevenson took Amy's virginity."
Keaton as a matriarch whose children call her by her first name is the moral
center and central aggressor of The Family Stone and daughter Amy is heir to
the throne. Amy's dislike of her big brother's intended hinges on surface
appearances, the stiff formality with which Sarah Jessica Parker's Meredith
Morton carries herself, and the maddening habit she has cultivated of
clearing her throat. Mother and daughter set upon the family guest as if she
were a virus that needed to be expelled. In an inverse of screwball comedies
that work toward resolving the differences between a minority outsider who
may be too black, too poor, too Hoboken, too round-heeled to fit in,
Everett's Meredith is too white, too uptight, and too far to the right for
the Stones. There is a dinner scene in which we all cringe for the slaughter
to come as this potential addition to the family breaks every taboo that can
be broken in a home as liberal and deliberately progressive as the Stones.
There is a love story here. But as Sarah Jessica Parker and Dermot Mulroney
embrace in front of a mirror in Everett's childhood bedroom and Parker, as
the self-conscious, buttoned up Meredith gazes at their reflection and
speaks of herself and the man she is about to marry in the third person
saying with some arrogance, "Look at them," we know the love story is
elsewhere. Luke Wilson as Ben Stone and Claire Danes as Meredith's sister,
Julie Morton, provide the elsewhere, bringing in the gremlins of true
attraction, moral compromise, and heartbreak to disrupt the seeming
perfection of the Stone household. Real love and real life are often as
debilitating, and liberating, as
cancer.
A rollicking holiday film.
