With his observations about the clash between a tightly wound Manhattan careerist and her boyfriend' s loose-limbed New England clan, writer-director Thomas Bezucha puts a fresh slant on the dynamics of family-reunion Christmas movies. [...] "The Family Stone" spends too much time on unconvincing romantic-comedy contrivances to be consistently engaging. Throughout the uneven film and its mixed bag of performances, the compelling point of focus is Diane Keaton's smart, funny, spot-on natural portrait of the formidable Stone matriarch.

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