The Family Stone

Monday night I watched The Family Stone on television. It stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson, Diane Keaton. And my girl Rachel McAdams is in it. I love her. I think she's fabulous.

Well, when I first saw this movie I was a bit ambivalent about it. There are so many different stories, not a lot of focus. At first glance it's a great ensemble movie-movies that get together a bunch of great actors and since everyone is just as great as the next the story doesn't really go anywhere.

Anyways, the other night I watched it for the second time. There was nothing else on. The Rachel Zoe Project was already over... :) The movie is okay. My main problem with it is that the family only works in Hollywood. There is way too much dysfunction for this family to be in the real world. Not that dysfunction does not exist-it does. But there is no way a family where two of the brothers basically switch lovers does not affect future family gatherings. And then there's the line from the mother character (played by Keaton) who says to Meredith (played by Parker) that she prayed for a homosexual son. In fact would have loved all of her three sons to be gay. Uptight Parker of course does not understand.

Personally, neither can I. I understand that our children will be subject to some ridicule because of their faith. Maybe I have that in common with the Keaton character, however misguided she is. (Or perhaps she would say that I am misguided...)

The Family Stone is evidence that there is a new style of Hollywood ending. Whereas the movies prior to the 1960's specialized in a super fantastic endings, with the leads falling in love, family's pulling together, good virtue being exhibited and praised, nowadays Hollywood endings are not just unrealistic but also extremely far-fetched. Gay couples do not have the blessings of families a lot of the time. A brother falling in love with and stealing another brother's lover is not cool. And if the leads do fall in love, they very rarely get married. Instead the ending will stop at sleeping with each other after one has confessed to loving the other. As if that's enough to sustain a commitment. And we're supposed to buy it!

Hollywood has been marketing dysfunction as normalcy for way too long and I for one am sick of buying into it.