It's a risky thing to make a movie about a woman so annoying, that everyone hates her. Either you end up having a character the audience doesn't take for real, or the character is such an embarrassment, that even the audience doesn't want to share the same room with her for more than ten minutes. The latter is the main problem of The Family Stone. The tragicomedy - which premise can be described as Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays with christmas instead of thanksgiving - follows the well behaved, buttoned down Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) as she is introduced into the family of her husband-to-be Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney). Already her arrival has written desaster all over it. After she tries to escape the bear hugs of Everett's father Kelly (Craig T. Nelson), Meredith has to face the wrath of youngest sister Amy (Rachel McAdams) and the immediate rejection of mother Sybil (Diane Keaton). Even Everett seems to be affected by the universal rejection of his usual liberal family, who can accept a black boyfriend for his deaf brother Thad (Tyrone Giardano), but are unable to detect anything likable in his future-bride. Only the pot-smoking brother Ben (Luke Wilson) takes a liking to Meredith, who deperately calls in her sister Julie (Claire Danes) as back-up. But the arrival of the smart, independent beauty only spells more trouble for Meredith and the Stones, who try to hide that a dark cloud is hanging over their heads... Writer/director Thomas Bezucha tries to weave an ensemble piece in the tradition of The Royal TenenbaumsM, but fails to deliver the same quirkyness or even the well-rounded characters. Despite those shortcoming, the acting is fabulous across the board, though there are a few odd casting choices. Choosing Dermot Mulroney as a romantic lead has always been a dubious decision - even when the script was better - but to think that the gorgeous Rachel McAdams only needs glasses to play a mousy girl is ridiculous at best. It's sad because Buzacha clearly knows how to strike the emotional chord in the audience and evoke true feeling out of his characters. But he finally succumbs to mediocrity when he tries to unravel the confusing relationships of his characters - and ends up with pairings who don't seem to be together because they're meant for each other, but because the script told them to.
The Bonus Material
Feature-long commentary with actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Dermot Mulroney
If you listen to most commentaries by actors and actresses, you might get the impression that they're not able to perform if they don't have a text to memorize. Unfortunately this dull effort by Parker and Mulroney is no exception to the rule. Parker spends most of the time giggling and easilymatches the annoyance of her character in the movie while Mulroney seems so unmotivated that even Parker calls him out ("Say something already"). There's lot of dead space in their commentary, partly originated by their strange decision to leave their own scenes without further explanations. There are a few anecdotes from the shoot here and there, but to find them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. You're better off skipping this part of the DVD.
Feature-long commentary with writer/director Thomas Bezucha, producer Michael London, editor Jeffrey Ford, and production designer Jane Ann Stewart
Much better is the second commentary of the DVD. Bezucha is clearly the leading man of this quartet, explaining a lot about the origins of the story and the translation to the screen. He also acts as a moderator here, asking his collaborators to weigh in about locations, design and other things regarding their specific department. It's clearly more technical and less "fun"-oriented than the actor's commentary, but at least you're getting some informations here.
Six deleted scenes with optional commentary by Thomas Bezucha and Jeffrey Ford
The deleted scenes are mostly transition scenes, lasting for less than a minute (the overall lenghts is 5 minutes). It's easy to see why they were cut out of the movie since they don't give you any necessary information, which is even admitted in the very good commentary by Bezucha and his editor.
Behind the Scenes
The longest featurette of the DVD lasts almost 18 minutes and is your typical, mostly fluffy, Making Of. The first third is spent by cast and crew retelling the story, before individual aspects like the use of sign language, sets, costumes and the "Being Yourself"-moral of the story are discussed (with Danes saying she already knew that from Sesame Street). Finally you get a montage of the actors having fun during the shoot, to show off what a nice working environment the set was. How cute!
Q&A Session with the Cast at the Screen Actor's Guild Theatre
This is the most fun feature of the DVD. Unfortunately only 8 minutes of the Q&A have been put on the DVD, since it cleary was a fun event. The participants (Claire Danes, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Sarah Jessica Parker and Tyrone Giordano) spend most of the time telling anecdotes (e.g. calling Craig T. Nelson out for his inability to do sign language) with Wilson emerging as the leader of the pack. His stories and the delivery are a blast and you have to wonder why the producers didn't ask him if he wanted to do an audio commentary instead of the dull pairing they ended up with.
Fox Movie Channel: Casting Session
The 8-minute-featurette starts with the fascinating information that the movie was close to being made twice (with different casts) before, but the financing fell through. From there it goes on to the casting process, the rehearsals and - once again - the sign language before we get the highlight of each and every dvd release: Cast and Crew talk about how much fun the shoot was, that they have never seen a happier set, yada yada yada...
Fox Movie Channel: World Premiere
Woohoo! Red-Carpet-Interviews. Joan Rivers is missing and they don't talk about who is wearing who, but this featurette is nothing but unnecessary.
Gag Reel
Someone flubbing his lines...Sarah Jessica Parker laughing...Someone stumbling...Sarah Jessica Parker laughing...Someone hitting his head...Sarah Jessica...you get the idea. I was about to recommend skipping
this "too forced to be funny"-segment when out of the blue Luke Wilson tried to do some witty improv and ended up mistaking J.Edgar Hoover for Herbert Hoover. Hilarious!
Recipe for the Morton family strata
If you feel the urge to cook something...
Trailer
The Bottom Line
The Movie and the DVD are honorable efforts, but in the end fall short of their goals. It is worth watching the movie because of its cast, but even this tremendous ensemble can't paper over all the cracks of the script. Nevertheless the DVD could have been worth a look, if the bonus material had been assembled more carefully. Replace the commentary of Parker and Mulroney with Wilson and McAdams and put the complete Q&A on the DVD and it would have been a nice release. As it is, it's only mediocre.
Skip It!
