Stats
Title: The Family Stone
Year released: December 16, 2005
Directed by: Thomas Bezucha
Notable Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Dermot Mulroney, Dian Keaton, Claire Danes
Available to Stream: Prime Video
Fun Facts
– The actors were given a crash course in American Sign Language.
– The line “And then, cried Max, let the wild rumpus start” is from Where the Wild Things Are.
Synopsis
Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) wants to bring his girlfriend, Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker), to meet his bohemian Connecticut family at Christmas. Straitlaced Meredith, feeling she needs backup, asks her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to come along. Hoping to win the approval of her boyfriend’s parents Sybil (Diane Keaton) and Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) and the rest of the family, instead Meredith succeeds only in highlighting her uptight personality and making Everett doubt his intentions.
Review
This will be my first spoiler review so watch this new classic and come back to find out my personal connection to it. My family has a tradition of going to see a movie on Thanksgiving and Christmas. My wife was getting tired of the selection of tear jerkers (Finding Neverland, Walk the Line) we had picked two years running. Well she was lucky(?) that she had gotten sick the year we saw The Family Stone.
The trailer for this movie had atypically kept a plot point from being revealed. The matriarch of the Stone family had a resurgence of breast cancer. My father was going through esophageal cancer at the time. When the surprise hit me and my parents my mom and I wept, embracing my dad from both sides.
Connection aside, this is a beautiful film about an imperfect family and the guests that reveal truth in a Stone sibling and have truth revealed through another Stone sibling during their visit.
You will never look at a frittata the same way ever again.