It's hard to keep up with a passel of WASPs in love.
Once again, dear readers, it's time for our weekly segment of Guilty Confessions: Which film critic do you think cherished a clandestine affection for
Something's Gotta Give
, dreadful as that movie admittedly was? Ah, yes, that would be your reviewer, with
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her starry eyed hero-worship of Diane Keaton, an actress who invariably can produce refreshingly unhinged behavior while simultaneously emerging as what my mother would call "a classy lady." She's survived the inevitable shiftlessness which seizes Hollywood women over 40, never mind whether they're actually interested in retiring; and she's pulled off a range of roles in films from
Reds
to
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
to the best work Woody Allen ever devised (
Love and Death
,
Play It Again
,
Sam
and of course
Annie Hall
)-to say nothing of capably inhabiting the
Godfather
trilogy and LeCarré's
Little Drummer Girl
.
So when you plunk down your $8 for
The Family Stone
, be reassured that all promo spots to the contrary, Ms. Keaton reigns unchallenged over this movie. It is
not
a Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle-and mercifully so, because as much as we hate to say it, being diehard fans of Carrie and Mr. Big and all, in this film she is just
awful
. To a humiliating degree not required by the demands of staying in character, she's badly photographed and unattractively costumed and overly serious and just generally scrawny and exhausted and poorly directed. Dermot Mulroney, too, seems to be tiring of himself, like some aging playboy of the '40s, and together they make such an unprepossessing couple that you almost want to pick on them yourself.
Which is exactly what happens when eldest son Everett (Mulroney) brings his uptight girlfriend Meredith (Parker) home for the holidays to meet the entire Connecticut cadre of Stones. With unearthly glee they go for the jugular (in particular Keaton as matriarch Sybil, and breakout starlet of the year Rachel McAdams as the deliciously malicious Amy), though dad Craig T Nelson and laid-back brother
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Luke Wilson (who seems to be playing Owen) offer some feeble remonstration. Eventually Meredith calls in her gorgeous sister Julie (Danes) for reinforcement. Everett's
secret is that he's planning to propose to Meredith; the Stone clan's secret is that they think Everett and Meredith a terrible match; Sybil's secret remains hers for most of the film, but its eventual disclosure changes everything in its wake. Can Luke get the wooden Meredith to loosen up a little? Can Everett get the rebar out of his rear long enough to realize just how pretty Julie is? In the fine tradition of holiday hanky-wavers, there'll be both guffaws and muffled sobs en route to resolution;
The Family Stone
's hardly great art, but it's genial winter's-eve entertainment-with a great actress to boot.
