Christmas is said to be a time of giving. However, the only thing the Stone family give house guest and prospective wife of their eldest son is the cold shoulder.

Meredith (Jessica Parker) is a power-dressing Manhattan career girl who's hooked up with Everett (Mulroney), eldest son of the Stone clan.

He's invited her to meet his parents, brothers and sisters in their sprawling, clapboard New England home over Christmas.

However, Meredith (controlling, uptight, conservative) is set on an unavoidable collision course with the Stones (Bohemian, hippy-liberal, smug).

This particular comedy path has been successfully followed before…but the Stones are so unredeemingly awful - thanks to a back-breaking burden of political correctness - you want to turn back.

Mum (Keaton) bustles around the house in the sort of dressing gown once favoured by Morecambe & Wise while she keeps the secret she's got terminal cancer.

Spiky Amy (McAdams) has already taken against the girl who threatens to steal away Everett while slacker brother Ben (Wilson) has taken a shine to Meredith himself.

To top it all, youngest son Thad (Ty Giordano) is both gay and deaf and is going out with Patrick, who's black and wants a baby. I'm not making this up.

(as more family members turn up, so frantic is the signing for the benefit of Thad that it appears most of them will be in casualty by Boxing Day suffering RSI).

With the arrival of Meredith's lively sister Julie (Danes), you don't have to be Barbara Cartland to second guess where this particular romantic road is going.

It's toe curling stuff salvaged to some extent by Parker, who's skeletally gaunt physog paints a thousands words as she leaves no Stone emotionally unturned.

Think Meet The Fokkers rewritten by The Guardian.

Tim Evans