THE CURSE OF THE CHATTERING CLASS

REVIEWED - THE FAMILY STONE: FOLLOWING the dubious Exorcism of Emily Rose, an apology for the simple superstitions of the moral majority, the Hollywood wet liberal establishment hits back here with an equally queasy portrait of Christmas among the militantly broad-minded.

Mother is Diane Keaton. One son is a documentary film-maker. Another son is - bite down on a rolled up copy of the New Yorker to contain your enthusiasm - a gay deaf man currently in negotiations with his African-American partner to adopt a child.

Though the Stone family, whose house is so heavily set-decorated that people are constantly knocking over ceramic bowls of globe artichokes, look as rosy-cheeked as the subjects of a Norman Rockwell painting, neo-conservatives may still regard their aggressively secular yuletide celebrations as evidence that Visigoths run the entertainment industry.

Decades of Stone complacency are shaken when the favourite son (Dermot Mulroney) brings home the girlfriend he met while doing business in Hades. Meredith Morton - oh, that prissily alliterative name - is everything the Stones hate. She's unashamed of making money. Her shoes match her skirt. Her hair is constantly pulled back tight enough to flare her nostrils.

Sarah Jessica Parker, assisted by the antagonism that 50 per cent of the audience will feel when reminded of the putrid Sex and the City, is really quite brilliant in the role. Right up until the moment she (literally) lets down her hair to join the cosy club, SJP adroitly allows just enough squeaks of vulnerability to escape her varnished carapace.

The softening of Meredith involves some effective light comedy, and Mulroney's eventual seduction of his fiancee's more Stoneish sister - she helps poor Alaskans carve totem poles - is, Claire Danes's increasing blandness noted, handled with amiable delicacy.

But there is, in the picture's later stages, a deeply unsettling attempt to combine tragedy with wholesome entertainment. One particular scene, in which an intimation of mortality is revealed to the accompaniment of Judy Garland singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, involves artistic bravery from Keaton, Nelson and the young director Thomas Bezucha. The sequence fails embarassingly for all that.