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88The Family Stone may not be super-serious or even, well, sly, but none of that matters: this is a warm and engaging film that is sure to become a perennial Christmas favorite.
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75Keaton, a sorceress at blending humor and heartbreak, honors the film with a grace that makes it stick in the memory.
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75Silly at times, leaning toward the screwball tradition of everyone racing around the house at the same time in a panic fueled by serial misunderstandings. There is also a thoughtful side.
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75A satisfying, big-hearted celebration of diversity that will brighten holiday moviegoing.
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75Indie director Bezucha has held on to just enough individuality to breathe a little life into the cliches.
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75As stuffed with beguiling performances - some of them unexpectedly good - as its script is overstuffed. And though even the beguiled may feel manipulated the next morning (or when hitting the exits), the players put it over by a nose. Happy holidays.
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75This is the best adult holiday film in a while.
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75Parker has a great time being the anti–Carrie Bradshaw while Keaton-as-matriarch is a particular joy -- funny, beautiful, elegant, touching, and at ease with a familiar, get-out-your-hankies holiday subplot.
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70As ridiculous, as mawkish and schizophrenic as The Family Stone is, it's also surprisingly endearing.
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70A film that's at times as ragged and shaggy as its family unit. But as written and directed by Thomas Bezucha, its offbeat mixture of highly choreographed comic crises and the occasional bite of reality make for an unexpectedly enticing blend.
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70The performances are delightful, and the picture comes together.
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70The potential for moral confusion in a liberal-minded family -- unpacked so ruthlessly in Noah Baumbach's "The Squid and the Whale" -- is scrutinized with more ambiguity in this good-natured comic subversion of the holiday get-together.
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67There are just too many damn characters, with the best ones taking a backseat to the dullish love quadrangle.
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63The Family Stone should have been a glittering holiday bauble along the lines of the irresistible Love Actually. Instead, Bezucha stuffs into our stockings what he thinks is good for us. It's not coal, but it's not entirely what we were hoping for, either.
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63A machine-tooled entertainment that's as fake and flimsy as a plastic Christmas tree. The only reason the movie isn't as bad as it has a right to be is the marvelous Diane Keaton.
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63The slapstick weeper The Family Stone is a lump of coal brightened by four diamond-sharp performances.
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63The movie is a holiday romantic comedy that wants to put the holiday romantic comedy out of business.
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63Popped in the oven and marked with a predictable P, The Family Stone is the Christmas cookie of Christmas movies -- this thing is so pat it should come with the recipe attached.
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60Luke Wilson has done some of his best work in dramatic roles (see "The Royal Tenenbaums" for clarity) and while he is not playing an entirely serious role here, his performance is still the most engaging.
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60Although in danger of being unable to decide what kind of film it wants to be, a well-written script and well-judged performances make this a family outing worth taking.
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60If there was ever a testament to the resilience of actors, in the face of a flawed script and wonky direction, The Family Stone is it.
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58In place of the dysfunctional family Christmas story we've come to expect for the holidays, The Family Stone gives us a cheerfully uncensored, generic counterculture clan and tosses a tightly wound control freak into the center of their holiday celebration.
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50Spends 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.
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50Parker is pretty much a disaster here, shrill and phony and, worst of all, spineless. She reminded me of Tea Leoni in "Spanglish," her performance working against the movie, serving only as a cumbersome, opaque obstacle.
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50Could we please declare a moratorium on funny-sad movies about dysfunctional families, especially families that come together for the holidays?
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50Almost totally emotionally bankrupt. But it's a very specific form of total emotional bankruptcy, one that feels honest and even uplifting at the time, because the actors are great and the direction's well intentioned and just-so.
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50The talented and quirky-pretty Sarah Jessica Parker gives an excruciating performance. It's a keenly self-conscious caricature - the bold, showy kind that often wins awards yet sends audiences running from the theater.
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50A potentially interesting tale flailing haplessly in the quicksand of holiday-movie formula.
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50The women make The Family Stone, especially Ms. Parker, whose nimble performance is reason alone to see the film: not since Philippe Petit has anyone walked a tightrope with such finesse - and in high heels, no less.
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50Lurching uncertainly from slapstick to tears, The Family Stone works hard to warm the cockles of our hearts. The cast is attractive. The sentiments are commendable. But the love Bezucha wants us to feel for the family couldn't possibly compete with the love they already feel for themselves.
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50Keaton embodies the formidable Stone matriarch with an offhand sense of humor that cuts like a knife.
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40Most of it falls on Bezucha, not just for devising these monstrously cruel characters, but for putting them in situations that are far too serious to be resolved by Christmas morning. When the melodrama gets too intense, the film collapses in slapstick.
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40It's hard to fathom why anyone would voluntarily endure a holiday family reunion movie -- a genre devised solely to demonstrate how grotesque and how heartwarming families can be--when actual holiday family reunions already exist for those very reasons.
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30There are many ways to define the shrieking awfulness of The Family Stone, from the general lack of wit to the cheap exploitation of cancer to its casual cruelty, but it's writer-director Thomas Bezucha's casting that really goes awry.
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25Bezucha made something perverse, a feel-bad holiday film about a repellent family, with a milquetoast dad and a smug, devious harpy of a mom.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 27 out of 73
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Mixed: 6 out of 73
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Negative: 40 out of 73
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MleaE.10I loved this movie! it was absolutely fantastic, it has just about everything you could want in a movie including a holiday!!
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CraigA.2Dismal... and just plain miserable. Thank Christ I didn't spoil my Christmas by going to see this family-drama-gone-wrong in the cinema.