Family is a four-letter word in the literate and smartly acerbic Christmas comedic drama “The Family Stone,” a relationship smorgasbord of acting talent coming together to produce one of the most perceptive holiday features in years. Writer-director Thomas Bezucha follows up his film festival favorite “Big Eden” splendidly, avoiding a sophomore slump by slyly crafting an unabashedly liberal drama that somehow manages to speak to everyone no matter what their Red State-Blue State leanings.

Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) doesn’t want to meet her boyfriend Everett Stone’s (Dermot Mulroney) family. The immaculate New York career woman knows she doesn’t meet her beau’s bohemian family’s expectations, and winning them over is probably going to be an impossibility no matter what she does. Not that Meredith is going to give up before even trying, it’s just that as much as she wants to make a good impression it’s really hard to do so when one’s personality has already been decided upon by the people you’re trying to impress.

And she’s not wrong. Strong-willed mom Sybil (Diane Keaton) is loathing this visit probably more than anyone else in her large close-knit clan. Once upon a time she promised her eldest son her mother’s ring, wanting him to place it upon the digit of the woman he’s going to spend the rest of his life with. Even though she has not met her, Sybil knows Meredith is this woman, and the thought that’s she is right is driving her mad because the girl isn’t right for her son. Worse, he doesn’t love her, and even if Everett doesn’t know it Sybil sure as heck does, and combined with a tragic secret of her own this holiday has all the makings for a disaster in her mind.

What follows next is a cacophony of trial and error and the open-minded yet highly conservative New Yorker comes face-to-face with an unapologetically liberal family completely unafraid to speak whatever it is that first pops into their minds. All of them seem to take turns jabbing at Meredith, doing their best to make her look the fool, Everett’s younger sister Amy (Rachel McAdams) most of all. Not even the arrival of her own sister Julie (Claire Danes) makes things easier, especially when she, too, starts agreeing with the Stone’s that Meredith really should just relax. Only second son Ben (Luke Wilson) seems to take the woman’s side, helping the frazzled woman find away to be at ease amidst this crazy gathering.

What I like most about “The Family Stone” is how spot-on this depiction of family life during the holidays really is. As joyous as these get-togethers can be, they never come without their travails. There are arguments, there are disagreements, there is joking, there is brutal honesty. Most of all, there is love. These are the events that shape memories for the rest of our lives and they are never easy and seldom smooth. Yet, more often than not, they also can’t help but work out, most times terrifically so.

I remember one Christmas when I was impossibly young we were in the midst of remodeling the house and money was exceptionally tight. We weren’t even going to get a tree. But then Christmas Eve came and my father decided it just wasn’t right to not have a tree in the house, so off into the frigidly cold Spokane night (the coldest I can ever recall) we went in search of one. Unsurprisingly, every tree stand in town was sold out. Finally, at the last possible stop, we found what we assume was the very last Christmas Tree in the entire city. It was a poor, maybe four-foot shrub that had completely folded into itself due to the extreme temperatures. It was flat, literally deflated, and because of that the manager, wanting to get back to his own family, gave it to us for free. So here we were, back at home with an incredibly thin Christmas Tree pinned to our living room wall like a picture frame. It was pathetic. It was silly. It was, needless to say, sad.

It was also the greatest Christmas I think we ever had.

This is the kind of thing “The Family Stone” understands. It gets that the holidays don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful, that it is those very imperfections that usually make it marvelous. The Stones are the type of family; right, left, somewhere in-between; we can all relate to, a piece of ourselves and our own lives residing within the festive warmth of their togetherness.

Not that Bezucha doesn’t overplay his hand. The romantic conventions within this story sometimes border on the cliché, a late-night sequence next to a departing bus particularly jarring in its self-absorbed syrupy sappiness. I also could have done without the tidy coda, and even if said final did leave me in tears I still can’t say I didn’t feel manipulated crying them. Finally, there is a brief foray into slapstick that is completely out of place, essentially taking me out of the emotionalism of the moment and instead forcing me to shake my head in unhappy disbelief.

Thankfully, these are minor complaints. The performances are universally excellent, Craig T. Nelson (as the Stone patriarch), Wilson and McAdams (what a breakout year this young actress has had) particularly noteworthy standouts. Parker and Keaton are fine, too, but as good as both are I can’t quite shake the feeling we’ve seen these portrayals from both actresses in the recent past. No matter, they’re still excellent, and it is impossible not to get a little emotional as both the Stones and the Mortons come together underneath the blinking lights of a Christmas Tree.

Is it perfect? Of course not, and if it were I can’t imagine it being half as entertaining or worth my time to talk about. Life is about the curveballs, holiday gatherings the time so many of these are accidentally unleashed. This is “The Family Stone,” and it is also the family universal and, as such, it can’t help but also be the movie entertaining.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)