There’s a lot of hatred out there for the devilishly hot assistant girlie who steals Alan Rickman away from Emma Thompson, but you know what? A) He’s the one who made marriage vows, not her, and B) At least she was chic!
To me, the true villain of this Christmas classic will always be Mark, the cucked bro of a newly married man who is super fucking mean to Keira Knightley in order to cover up his sad crush on her (are you four?) and then stages a really cringe and emotional-affair-vibes card presentation to prove his love while she’s at home with her husband on Christmas Eve. How have we possibly socialized that scene as romantic? “Enough now,” indeed!
Meredith Morton in The Family Stone (2005)
Photo: ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
A compelling case was recently made by writer Rose Dommu that Rachel McAdams is the true villain of this movie, but for me, it will always be Sarah Jessica Parker’s Meredith—partly because McAdams’s home-for-the-holidays drip is so good, and partly because Meredith is so boring and weird and toxic for basically the entire movie… at least until she gets drunk and high and drops the strata and starts having some good, old-fashioned, dysfunctional-family Christmas fun. Like…why are your only topics of conversation your work trips to Hong Kong and your casual homophobia, queen?