The Family Stone

Needless to say, The Family Stone was not my choice of movie, but the missus and I take it in turns to choose stuff. I'm nothing if not democratic, y'know. Red likes all that Sex & the City stuff, so a film with "Carrie" in it, not to mention her latest love Rachel McAdams, was always going to be a shoo-in. And I don't mind Dermot "Wolf" Mulroney and Diane Keaton, so what the hell, right?

SJP plays an uptight posh chick who goes with her boyfriend to his family for Thanksgiving. The family pretty much hate her; not so much because she is uptight and posh, but more because she is socially incompetent and says all the wrong things.

During the course of the vacation, it is boyfriend Mulroney's intention to ask SJP to marry him, but the path of true love, as they say, never runs smooth.

This is yet another in that current spate of Hollywood movies that starts out as a pretty funny comedy, then takes a maudlin, morbid, tragic turn. What the fuck is with that? Anyway, fortunately some restraint was employed by the writers and directors, who, along with a fine ensemble cast, pulled the whole thing together very nicely. Even Claire Danes goes some way towards compensating for her shit-awful performance in the pretty-darn-bad Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Scores
Acting: 14
Story: 13
Direction: 13
Enjoyment: 13
Involvement: 13
Total: 66