NEED TO KNOW
This article contains spoilers for 2005’s The Family Stone.
There are few Christmas movies as controversial as 2005’s The Family Stone.
The movie, which turns 20 this year, stars Sarah Jessica Parker as Meredith, the uptight girlfriend of Dermot Mulroney’s Everett Stone. When Everett brings Meredith home for Christmas, the titular family — brought to life by Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Luke Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Tyrone Giordano and Rachel McAdams — pretty much immediately loathes her. Claire Danes plays Meredith’s sister Julie who joins the celebration as reinforcements and Brian J. White plays Patrick, the partner of Giordano’s Thad. The movie was written and directed by Thomas Bezucha.
The Family Stone haters will say this is a movie about a bunch of horrible people who all inflict that horror on each other. They are petty and quick to judge. The Stones (except for Wilson’s Ben) don’t give Meredith a chance. They make Christmas miserable. Meredith, meanwhile, is elitist and clueless and, in one scene so cringey that rewatching it made me shudder, homophobic. But that’s not all. Meredith’s sister Julie ends up falling in love with Everett, while Meredith falls for Ben! The horror!
Zade Rosenthal/20th Century Fox
I, a Family Stone lover, would agree with all of this. Pretty much no one in this movie behaves in a way that looks good for them. McAdams’ Amy is too judgmental, Everett never backs up his girlfriend, Ben is nuts for putting the moves on his brother’s girlfriend and Meredith pulls off a very mean prank on Amy involving Brad Stevenson (played by Paul Schneider). Even Keaton’s Sybil and Nelson’s Kelly don’t come off much better than their fictional brood.
But if someone made a documentary about one of my family’s holidays — or one of your family’s holidays — would everyone come off sparkling? Does everyone behave perfectly? Does everyone have an open heart to their siblings’ partners? Does no one put their foot in their mouth despite knowing better? And despite those massive, glaring flaws, do we not still love each other? Do we not still deserve love?
Meredith and Everett and Julie and Ben and Amy all mess up and do things that no other romantic heroes in comedy movies would dare to do. They misstep in real ways with real consequences, not in dainty little rom-com ways. I love this about them.
Sometimes when I see people discussing romantic stories, whether in movies, TV or books, they get caught up on a character’s failings. If they did this bad thing, do they deserve to have this “nicer” character love them? Are they good enough for me to root for them? Are they “toxic”?
Zade Rosenthal/20th Century Fox
I find these conversations exhausting, and I think they’re missing the point. In real life, not one of us is perfect. We’ve all done things we are not proud of. We have not perfectly communicated, or we’ve messed around with someone’s feelings, or, as Everett does, gotten ready to propose to someone we absolutely should not be marrying.
The fact that we can love each other despite all this is what makes romance so good. Uptight Meredith and laidback Ben shouldn’t work together, but they do. Love can be redeeming, reaffirming, can make us try better next time. It can make us kinder, wiser, gentler people. If only perfect people get to fall in love, what’s the point at all?
Watching The Family Stone again this year, I was struck by something I hadn’t given enough credit to the first time. In the film, Keaton’s Sybil has learned her breast cancer is back, and it’s bad. Some of her children suspect as much at the beginning of the movie, but by the film’s final act, they all know for sure.
Then, The Family Stone is not about uniquely horrible people being mean for no reason, but about people dealing with their mother’s terminal illness. Each of them, understandably, is spinning out because of it. But what shines through, ultimately, is their messy, hard, sometimes awful love for each other and their parents. And pretty much nothing gets me more in the holiday spirit than that.
