Customer Reviews
Good festive fayre!! - By: Sean Murray, 02 Jan 2009 
Highly watchable film with for the silly season. Diane Keaton is great as usualin a familiar mother role. Everything kind of resolves itself very quickly & the length of the film kind of gives a feeling of every loose end tying up rather easily. Claire Danes is a bit wastedin it as she comes into it quite late on & her relationship development with her sister's man does feel a bit quick & 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 & really genuine. Some nice laughs & one liners, & liked Luke Wilson's stoner role. Could have been really good but with an ensemble piece there's a lot to juggle I guess.
Does Anyone Know...? - By: Ms. S. Goodbody, 24 Dec 2008 
Does anyone know what the xmas movie is called that the daughter (suzanna) is watching?
Stone Age - By: DL Productions UK, 23 Dec 2008 
Christmas time is all about sharing, enjoying being with the family or a partner, & just generally having fun, watching children as they delight over their new big toys & run around the housein 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?); & for Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker - Failure To Launch) she has the daunting task of meeting the parents, but notin a fun & 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 & trying too hard to be ultra PC & prim & proper. Yes, it's good that it shows people being more tolerant to other people, but I just felt it patronised & pushed it's agenda on us too much. It's also very nice to see a film where it's not all happiness & glad tidings, but it's not exceptionally filled with festiveness - & 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, & Julia Louis Dreyfus (Elaine Benesin Seinfeld) - they don't seem to be able to shake off the reputation & 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 & the Griswald familyin National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (DVD) or Blu-ray.
Rent with caution.
A different kind of Xmas Family gathering - By: K. van Amelorde, 04 Aug 2008 What happens when the son brings home for X-mas a girl he wants to marry & the family thinks her utterly unsuitable for him & the family? Well this movie answers your question.
Legendary & Oscar winning Diane Keaton as Sybil Stone is the outspoken matriarch, wo survived a bout of breast cancer & has recently fallen ill again, keeps the family together & presides over it.
Sarah Jessica Parker as Meredith Morton is the stiff businesswoman & 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 Bradshawin the award-winning Sex & the City, but the actress proves her versatility as an unsympathetic characterin this movie.
As usual during a Family X-mas a lot of all year hidden family trouble comes up & is exposed. Partly it is quite funny, partly annoying & partly over-done: does the gay son have to cover as well the handicaped (deaf) & the radicial bit (partner is a black American)?
But still it is entertaining & funny & 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 & is very very very nice feature of this movie.
Enjoyable chick-flick with rather predictable ending - By: Meerkat, 03 Jan 2008 My title kinda sums up my thoughts about this film. I somehow missed it on cinema release & watched it with a friend, under the influence of a lot of G&T on New Year's Eve. The combination of G&T & celebration might have caused me to judge the film rather generously, but I shall watch it again while sober & 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 herselfin 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 & 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' & 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 & another or three) & you might just change your mind ...
