The Family Stone (2005)

The Family Stone arrives in 2005 as a Christmas comedy of hostile in-laws, a fish-out-of-water picture in which an uptight businesswoman named Meredith is dragged to a bohemian New England home and picked apart by a family that mistakes its own rudeness for authenticity. The film is pleasant, occasionally sharp, and convinced that a dying mother and a botched proposal amount to emotional depth. We have seen this house before. We know exactly where the mistletoe hangs.

What distinguishes the picture, mildly, is its furniture. Thad, one of the Stone sons, is deaf and gay, played by the deaf actor Tyrone Giordano, and his partner Patrick sits at the dinner table as a full member of the clan. Their plan to adopt a child triggers a debate about nature against nurture, staged as family friction instead of a sermon. A Black actor, Brian J. White, appears as Amy's love interest, and nobody remarks on it. These are gestures of a certain liberal decency, not a thesis, and the film never asks them to carry weight.

The picture has no interest in capital, climate, or the body, and its feminism amounts to a woman with a job and a mother with opinions. Its historical sense is nil. What remains is a mild, well-acted domestic comedy that treats its own tolerance as settled and asks nothing further of anyone. It is the cultural equivalent of a polite Christmas card, signed by the whole family, meaning very little.