Saturday, July 01, 2006

Sly? Um, no: "The Family Stone"

Here's what we'll do to with this POS of a movie, which My Normally Sane and Reasonable Wife selected in her quest to spend our free Blockbuster gift card on worthless crap. I'll tell you the basic story: Guy brings girlfriend home to family for holidays with intention of proposing to her with grandma's ring. Hijinks ensue.

But since this movie pretends to be en ensemble piece, let's just run through the cast and see how each does here compared with elsewhere:

Diane Keaton: While I've never been a big fan, she generally is a good actor. Heck, I could even tolerate "Something's Gotta Give." Unfortunately, her game effort as the mom here comes off as alternately bitchy and coddling -- an odd and unsuccessful combo.

Craig T. Nelson: Probably the highlight of this movie, and I always wished he was a bigger star in general. Seriously, between the dad in "Poltergeist" and the coach in "All the Right Moves," the commish has chops. In "Stone," he's the dad again, and generally tolerable.

Rachel McAdams: The cutie from "Wedding Crashers" and heroine from "Red-Eye" is insufferable here. OK, I can stand the plain-jane look -- even the glasses -- but no need to slam my head in the door of your smarter-than-thou attitude. It's unbecoming, dear, and frankly hard to believe. I get it ... you don't like your brother's girlfriend. It's not like she killed your dog, though.

Luke Wilson: Apparently he didn't want brother Owen getting all the laid-back, 21st century sensitive philosopher roles. Ooooh, he's so effortlessly decent and unpatronizing compared with his family! How can you not love him? Well, easily, it turns out. Stick to being the straight man, Mitch.

Claire Danes: Ugh. She may be the biggest disappointment of all. Not because of her acting, which has been solid throughout her career. She just doesn't get to show any of that in "Stone," which gives her a character (the girlfriend's sister) with no real depth and a would-be epiphany near the end that is harder to swallow than Tom Cruise being straight. It actually made me angry, and I hate feeling that way about my shopgirl, especially since she ends up with ...

Dermot Mulroney: Yeah, I don't like this guy, and I really don't care if I gave away a spoiler just now. (Gee, maybe you won't see this movie. No need to thank me.) Anyway, nothing you can say can convince me he's the good-looking dreamboat this movie and others ("The Wedding Date," "My Best Friend's Wedding") purport him to be. Uh-uh. Now, the loser in "About Schmidt?" That's more like it.

Sarah Jessica Parker: Guess what? I like her even less than our man Dermot. Didn't like her in "Sex and the City" -- I was a Charlotte man, myself -- and don't know if I've liked her in anything else. OK, maybe "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," but that was because of the whole Catholic high school girl-gone-bad thing. (And she was only competing with a young Helen Hunt on-screen.) After the success of "Sex," it stands to reason that Sarah's film career could suffer, and here's a great first step. She sucks in this -- her character, her acting, her general presence. If the movie had the balls to cast her out after the family holiday debacle, I might have cut it some slack. Alas, she's redeemed along with everyone else, and that made me want to put my foot through the flat-screen.

So yeah, not the best movie I've seen. Three stars.

Kidding. It sucked. Bad. Go rent "Home for the Holidays," which isn't great but seems like "Casablanca" compared to this crap.

3 Comments:

At 10:51 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Goodness. Sounds like you hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie.

 
At 9:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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At 3:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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