This blog has an informal policy of not writing about cases where the movie-in-movie is significantly better than the “host” movie; I’ve called it the South Pacific/Welcome to Woop Woop Rule. I’ll make an exception in the case of Thomas Bezucha’s The Family Stone (2005). Why? Well, for one thing, both it and Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) are holiday movies and we’re smack dab in the holiday season.

And the other thing is, I find the contrast between the two films interesting. Family Stone has the reputation of being a good movie. I just saw it for the first time and I beg to differ. I found it manipulative, mendacious, hollow, and believable for maybe forty-five seconds. I don’t want to pile on (after all it’s the holiday season) so I’ll just quote Manohla Dargis of the New York Times and move on: “Tolstoy didn’t know the Stones, who are happy in a Hollywood kind of way and unhappy in a self-help kind of way. This tribe of ravenous cannibals bares its excellent teeth at anyone who doesn’t accommodate the family’s preening self-regard.”

Meet Me in St. Louis really is a good movie, maybe a great one. And in this context maybe the most striking thing about it is its honest and affecting sentiment, as opposed to sentimentality. In this Family Stone Christmas Eve scene, Stone family daughter Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) — who’s merely bland, not fake — tells her father, Kelly (Craig T. Nelson), that she’s not going to bed because her favorite scene is about to start. Esther (Judy Garland) is dancing with Grandpa (Harry Davenport), also on Christmas Eve.

Basically, The Family Stone is hijacking Meet Me in St. Louis for its emotion. The larceny continues, as we see a montage of the various characters conducting their various Christmas Eve activities, to the tune of the Meet Me In St. Louis song that many people (with justice) consider the best holiday song ever, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

I could go on to say that in addition to everything else, this violates what must be one of the dramatic unities, as in Minelli’s film, it’s sung before the dance scene. But who needs more carping from me? Merry Christmas, everybody.