The Family Stone

This painfully obvious, unpleasantly tart, grossly unfunny holiday flick stars Sarah Jessica Parker as an unsympathetically uptight city gal spending Christmas with the hostile, WASP-y, generically eccentric New England clan of her mismatched fiancé (Dermot Mulroney). Eminently amiable Rachel McAdams (Mulroney's cutie-pie lesbian sister), Luke Wilson (his laidback, nice-guy brother), and Claire Danes (as Parker's little sis, who joins her for moral support) are hard to like here—even once the cruelty gives way to insultingly telegraphed romantic realignments that get Parker to let her hair down (literally). Family spite (Diane Keaton costars as the malicious mother and Craig T. Nelson as the one-dimensional dad) can be entertaining (Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays—also starring Danes—is a hilarious yet melancholy play on the same themes), but if writer-director Thomas Bezucha (a former fashion-industry executive—go figure) thinks this kind of vitriol is comical, he needs to get out of the director's chair and onto a therapist's couch. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include two audio commentaries (one by costars Sarah Jessica Parker and Dermot Mulroney; the other by writer-director Thomas Bezucha, producer Michael London, editor Jeffery Ford, and production designer Jane Ann Stewart), an 18-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, an eight-minute Q&A with the cast at the Screen Actors Guild Theater from October 2005, the Fox Movie Channel-produced “Casting Session” featurette (8 min.) and World Premiere” (6 min.), a six-minute gag reel, six deleted scenes with optional commentary (6 min.), the “Morton Family Strata” recipe, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a disappointing film.] (R. Blackwelder)