Writer/director Thomas Bezucha's The Family Stone is an odd bird – part farcical rom-com, part tear-jerking family drama and part strident social commentary, this Christmas-centric film was a modest success at the box office in 2005, but you'd be hard-pressed to point any particular reason why. The cast is strong – any flick with Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Dermot Mulroney, Claire Danes, Luke Wilson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Paul Schneider and Rachel McAdams can't be all bad, can it? Bezucha tackles some potentially incendiary topics – a gay, bi-racial couple adopting a child, among others – with wit, grace and humanity, while managing some riotously funny setpieces that ring with an unsettling air of authenticity.

So where does The Family Stone lose its luster? For starters, Parker's character, Meredith, is so utterly abrasive that it's difficult for audiences to connect and empathize early on, which unfortunately, Bezucha's narrative depends upon – it's no fault of the actress, who is great in the role of a businesswoman wound much too tightly, but rather that Bezucha hits the ground running, electing to fill in background details at sparse intervals. Bezucha's script is also maddeningly vague, hinting at crucial plot points but denying audiences information until well past confusion (I won't tread anywhere near spoiler territory here). It's a curious tactic that keeps you at arm's length, unable to get very close to the eccentric Stone family – mother Sybil (Keaton), father Kelly (Nelson), brothers Everett, Thad and Ben (Mulroney, Tyrone Giordano and Wilson, respectively) and sister Amy (McAdams) come across more-so as a bundle of quirks than real people, despite Bezucha's ability to generate situations that feel true to life.

Reality only gets you so far and so it is with The Family Stone – Bezucha's ability to, as Parker puts it in the supplements, not merely traffic in archetypes, helps make this odd combination of genres into an at least watchable film, but it's not one you'll reach for whenever the holiday gatherings get underway. Perhaps that's part of its charm – that fussy unwillingness to be easily categorized, despite the cast's warm appeal and competency – but it's also part of the film's ultimate failure.

The Video:

The Family Stone is offered up with a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that is exceptional – nary a speck of dirt or hint of edge enhancement besmirches this image, which you'd expect from a recently released mainstream film. A great visual representation.

While the image impresses, the audio does not: outfitted with an unremarkable Dolby Digital 5.1 track that doesn't offer much activity beyond what transpires through the front channels, I found myself frequently turning up the volume to hear what characters were saying. Once at a higher-than-normal level, I was surprised that dialogue (and the occasional bit of score) was about all there was to hear. A Dolby 2.0 stereo track is also on board, as are English subtitles.

The Family Stone arrives on DVD with a wealth of supplemental material: Parker and Mulroney sit for a commentary as does Bezucha, producer Michael London, editor Jeffrey Ford and production designer Jane Ann Stewart. Six deleted scenes are here, playable separately or together for an aggregate of five minutes, 38 seconds and with optional Bezucha/Ford commentary; the eight minute featurette "Fox Movie Channel Presents Casting Session" and the six minute "Fox Movie Channel Presents World Premiere" offer precisely what the titles promise; a 17-minute behind-the-scenes featurette goes into a little more detail; an eight minute Q&A session, conducted on Oct. 8, 2005 at the Screen Actors Guild Theatre, features Mulroney, McAdams, Parker, Danes, Giordano and Wilson with a five minute, 46 second gag reel, trailers for The Family Stone, Confetti, Little Manhattan and Just My Luck as well as five text screens detailing the recipe for "Meredith's Strata: A Morton Family Tradition." In a nice touch worth mentioning, Fox offers English subtitles on every special feature (except trailers).

An almost defiantly strange brew of several ideas and genres, The Family Stone is a film in search of itself – writer/director Thomas Bezucha's screenplay fashions believable, empathetic characters but doesn't really know what to do with them. At the very least, The Family Stone is worth a rental spin – those who warm to this prickly clan may want to bring them home permanently.