Entertainment

ROILING STONES

MOST of Hollywood’s family-oriented holiday movies are about as soggy as fruitcakes – and equally appetizing.

“The Family Stone” is a happy exception.

This rollicking screwball dramedy goes mercifully light on the sugar, offering some tart performances from a first-rate cast headed by Sarah Jessica Parker and Diane Keaton.

Parker leaves the sweet and ditzy Carrie Bradshaw far behind to play Meredith, a tightly wound control freak of a career woman who quickly regrets accepting an invitation to spend the holidays with her fiancé at his bohemian clan’s home in a New England college town.

It’s reds vs. blues, with the freewheeling Stone family appalled that the snobby Meredith is so proper she won’t even share a bedroom with her intended, oldest son and aging jock Everett (Dermot Mulroney in his standard dreamboat mode).

Snarky youngest daughter Amy (an extremely funny Rachel McAdams, capping a remarkable year that included “Wedding Crashers” and “Red Eye”) is openly contemptuous of Meredith, constantly baiting the family’s guest.

The other Stones furiously communicate their unease among themselves using sign language – youngest son Thad (Tyrone Giordano) is deaf, as well as being gay and married to a black man with whom he is contemplating adoption.

The shtick hits the fan when the less than open-minded Meredith unwittingly insults sweet Thad and his hubby (Brian J. White) over dinner.

Matriarch Sybil (Diane Keaton) and the others – even her soft-spoken professor spouse, subtly performed by Craig T. Nelson – tear into the devastated Meredith, who moves to a hotel and sends for her sister Julie (Claire Danes) for moral support.

While an unlikely rapport develops between Meredith and her fiancé’s younger brother Ben (Luke Wilson), a pothead documentary filmmaker, Everett is busy discovering he has more in common with the artsy Julie than with her sister.

Adding to the spiraling confusion, Meredith mischievously decides to get even with Amy by inviting her discarded EMS technician boyfriend to a Christmas breakfast that turns into a hilarious slapstick disaster.

Though “The Family Stone” revolves around a highly dysfunctional family whose head turns out to be hiding a tragic secret – and also stars Luke Wilson – this movie couldn’t be more different in tone than the ironic “The Royal Tenenbaums,” or even the similarly themed “Home for the Holidays.”

Writer-director Thomas Bezucha – a former fashionista who helmed the excellent gay-themed indie “Big Eden” – seems more influenced by classic farces like the 1938 Best Picture Oscar winner, “You Can’t Take It With You,” though he uses the form to explore contemporary cultural clashes that Frank Capra could not have possibly imagined.

Though Bezucha flirts with stereotype and contrivance, “The Family Stone” is a satisfying, big-hearted celebration of diversity that will brighten holiday moviegoing – at least in the blue states.

THE FAMILY STONE

[***] (Three stars)

Sly take on the culture wars. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sexual and drug references). At the Empire, the Village East, the Beekman, others.