The Yuletide season has a history of producing an array of family comedies displaying the dysfunctional (Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Home For the Holidays) the magical (Miracle on 34th Street) and the truly insane (Bad Santa, Santa Clause: The Movie). This time around we are given a film trying to juggle John Hughes style comedy with heart-touching drama. It is brought to us by Thomas Bezucha (pronounced like the weapon) his second feature after his 2001 debut Big Eden.

The Stone house has become crowded for yet another Christmas and this time around the eldest son Everett (Dermot Mulroney) has brought a special someone he met on business named Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) who may be a future Mrs. Stone. That is if Everett can get approval from his mother for the Stone family's wedding ring, which was handed down from his grandmother. The parents, Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) and Sybil (Diane Keaton, in top form) are a brash couple of speak-their-mind-liberals who see no reason not to put Meredith in the hot seat after noticing this Christmas package is wrapped a little too tight. (I know you're thinking Meet The Parents, but it's actually more like Meet the whole Family.)

The Stones are an extremely tight-knit bunch - all adults except for one older teen, Amy (Rachel McAdams). Pretty much the whole family are wary of this stiff newcomer, with the exception of Ben (Luke Wilson) who displays a slight fondness for Meredith and at one point takes her out for beers and gets her to loosen up. On the other side of the coin is Amy, cold and catty, and not above treating this outsider with open hostility. On a couple of occasions Amy goes so far as to contrive to make Meredith appear even more unStone-like (conservative). Alas, in an act of desperation, Meredith calls for back-up - her sister (Claire Danes) who drops everything and rushes to her sister's side. She too will spend Christmas with the Stones, which brings about even more twists and turns.

Bezucha has painted the Stone family as the ideal liberalized dream-team, but he never uses this in the film, anymore than he uses the Victorian furnishings. All of which causes one to wonder if the director merely "wishes" this were how life really was, or if he's deluded enough to believe that there really are Stone Families out there? Not in the silly little place most of us refer to as reality, there isn't.

If it weren't a Christmas movie, this lapse of plausibility would be completely unforgivable. Still this fantasy liberal haven (where father and son pass the time passing a joint) did not play into the plot in anything more than the most innocuous way. For example, early on there is a scene where Parker expresses her reservations about sleeping in the same bed with Mulroney, whereupon Keaton disagrees, and comes out of left field with something like - "surely you don't expect me to believe you're not having sex?" Amusing in it's non-sequitir reversal, but again that's about as political as the film gets.

True, the film is not without it's funny and entertaining moments, but it's weighed down by too many dumb wannabe-Hughes-esque comic escapades (i.e. injuries sustained at a bus stop, the destruction of dinner entrees and a Saab 9-3 crashing into the landscaping of the Stone home.) It seems this is all done to undercut the heavy-handed drama of Everett and Meredith's crumbling relationship and a family member dying of breast cancer (guess who?) Throw in some sibling swapping and you have a film not credible enough for drama and not quite funny enough to cut it as a comedy (which it's marketed as). Too bad given the likable performances from all the cast members.

I might also make mention of the use of a gay family member as unnecessary drama. The director's other film Big Eden was a far more effective take on a gay relationship set in small town America, all of which makes it's inclusion in The Family Stone seem all the more half-baked and poorly concieved.