Family Stone, The [2005]

See Larger Image	List Price: £15.99 Our Price: £5.58 Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Paul Schneider, Claire Danes, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams Directed By: Bezucha Thomas Average Customer Rating:


Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Audience Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over Binding: DVD EAN: 5039036025683 Format: Anamorphic Label: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Region Code: 2 Release Date: 2006-04-17 Running Time: 99 Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Theatrical Release Date: 2005
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Editorial Reviews: For anyone who views holiday gatherings with equal parts joy and dread, The Family Stone offers plenty of comedy to identify with. Writer-director Thomas Bezucha's slapstick premise begins when Everett (Dermot Mulroney) brings his fiancé Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) home to meet his family for Christmas. It's an instant disaster when parents Sybil (Diane Keaton) and Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) agree with their gay, deaf son Thad (Ty Giordano, who is actually hearing impaired), pot-smoking son Ben (Luke Wilson) and daughters Amy (Rachel McAdams) and Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) that Meredith is way too uptight to be welcomed into their family. Meredith recruits her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to help her thaw the Stone family cold front, and after building a solid emotional foundation for his holiday comedy, Bezucha starts to stack the deck with plot developments that, while heartwarming, border on the absurd. You either go with the movie's flow or you don't, and with this appealing cast (featuring some really nice work by Keaton, Nelson, Parker and Danes) it's easy to forgive Bezucha's unlikely blend of yuletide cheer, petty animosities, and romantic tables turned in the blink of an eye. Toss in a case of terminal illness and you've got a sad-happy tearjerker that works in spite of itself. If you don't recognize at least part of your own holiday clan in The Family Stone, you probably haven't been paying attention. --Jeff Shannon
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Good festive fayre!! Comment: Highly watchable film with for the silly season. Diane Keaton is great as usual in a familiar mother role. Everything kind of resolves itself very quickly and the length of the film kind of gives a feeling of every loose end tying up rather easily. Claire Danes is a bit wasted in it as she comes into it quite late on and her relationship development with her sister's man does feel a bit quick and unlikely. The elder pregnant sister is a bit of a non entity whereas the others a given a reasonble amount of colour to their characters. The family interplay was great and really genuine. Some nice laughs and one liners, and liked Luke Wilson's stoner role. Could have been really good but with an ensemble piece there's a lot to juggle I guess. Customer Rating: Summary: Does Anyone Know...? Comment: Does anyone know what the xmas movie is called that the daughter (suzanna) is watching? Customer Rating: Summary: Stone Age Comment: Christmas time is all about sharing, enjoying being with the family or a partner, and just generally having fun, watching children as they delight over their new big toys and run around the house in excitement. Sometimes though, Christmas can be a bit of a scary moment, especially if you are shy - or just don't like a family member (I'm sure we all have one we don't like?); and for Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker - Failure To Launch) she has the daunting task of meeting the parents, but not in a fun and jovial way like with the Fockers or Byrnes - but a rather difficult Stone family, with Cybil Stone being a tough mother to please. Everett wants to marry Meredith - but will she say yes? I didn't like The Family Stone, it was too sombre and trying too hard to be ultra PC and prim and proper. Yes, it's good that it shows people being more tolerant to other people, but I just felt it patronised and pushed it's agenda on us too much. It's also very nice to see a film where it's not all happiness and glad tidings, but it's not exceptionally filled with festiveness - and you think that Christmas is really just a small back bone of this movie. The cast are pretty good, but I just felt Sarah Jessica Parker has not really moved on from being Carrie. This is the problem with big stars like her, and Julia Louis Dreyfus (Elaine Benes in Seinfeld) - they don't seem to be able to shake off the reputation and mindset people have about them. Her emotion looked rather put on during the scenes where she was upset too. The sub plots just about save this from being a total disaster, but for me this really didn't reach the highs it should have had. If you want a good old Christmas movie, look to our friend Chevy Chase and the Griswald family in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (DVD) or Blu-ray. Rent with caution. Customer Rating: Summary: A different kind of Xmas Family gathering Comment: What happens when the son brings home for X-mas a girl he wants to marry and the family thinks her utterly unsuitable for him and the family? Well this movie answers your question. Legendary and Oscar winning Diane Keaton as Sybil Stone is the outspoken matriarch, wo survived a bout of breast cancer and has recently fallen ill again, keeps the family together and presides over it. Sarah Jessica Parker as Meredith Morton is the stiff businesswoman and control-freak girlfriend with a throat-clearing tick who annoys the members of the Stone family. Sarah Jessica Parker may have risen to stardom as one Carrie Bradshaw in the award-winning Sex and the City, but the actress proves her versatility as an unsympathetic character in this movie. As usual during a Family X-mas a lot of all year hidden family trouble comes up and is exposed. Partly it is quite funny, partly annoying and partly over-done: does the gay son have to cover as well the handicaped (deaf) and the radicial bit (partner is a black American)? But still it is entertaining and funny and emotional. I like the second Xmas reunioon after Mother Stone has passed away. The photograph showing Sybil Stone pregnant with her baby-daughter Amy, which Meredith gives to everyone as a Christmas present, is an original photograph of Diane Keaton and is very very very nice feature of this movie. Customer Rating: Summary: Enjoyable chick-flick with rather predictable ending Comment: My title kinda sums up my thoughts about this film. I somehow missed it on cinema release and watched it with a friend, under the influence of a lot of G&T on New Year's Eve. The combination of G&T and celebration might have caused me to judge the film rather generously, but I shall watch it again while sober and see whether that's fair or not. I can understand the criticisms; as soon as Clare Danes appears as the freewheeling, glamorous, blonde (for goodness sake!) sister, you just know that there's going to be a merry-go-round of partner swapping. And that bit did not ring true - having made such an a*se of herself in front of the entire family, how could Meredith then become a welcomed member of that family?!? And how could she simply swap affections like that and then spend the rest of her life watching her sister being married to the man she'd wanted to marry?!? Ah well, as my friend kept saying, 'it's only a film' and it is 'only a film'; just a light piece of entertainment, after all. To those who hated it, try again with a double G&T (oh and another or three) and you might just change your mind ... More Reviews