Meredith, a very polite and well educated business-person but also very odd and quite unpleasant, joins Everett to his family Christmas celebration. She's about to find out that due to her personality, she's going to have a lot of trouble adapting to a loving, open- minded family which she can't understand. Meredith's relationship with Everett is going to be put to the ultimate test before the upcoming proposal.It's an interesting story which doesn't lose any time when it comes to presenting itself. We see Meredith put in the middle of the "action" right from the beginning, struggling to make her way into a new family. Meeting and understanding everyone will prove to be a difficult task for her and the ending will be as pleasant as it is unexpected. It manages to be very funny from time to time and it keeps your attention most of the time, moving from one situation to another (thanks to its rather large number of characters). It's enjoyable overall but it had some parts which seemed too exaggerated, out of place, or even too embarrassing for my taste. A good movie to be seen in the winter holidays.

Dreadful, dreadful film. Very stilted script with idiotic scenes. Scenes that should have been poignant patently were not. The pregnant pauses where we know what the character should be saying to sort the situation out are not made full use of. This could have been done so much better. You don't empathise with the characters because they are so spiteful to the favoured son's slightly uptight girlfriend. Someone who has been brought to the family home for what should be a joyous occasion, Christmas. I don't understand why the boyfriend didn't warn her what the family was like and he obviously didn't love her as he didn't follow her out once she became distressed and left the house. He just mooned about like a wet week and it was left to the brother who did have a spine to corral the girlfriend, calm her down and bring her back into the fold. Finally it descended into slapstick when the writers couldn't think of anything else to do with the script. All in all a waste of the incredible acting talent that it attracted.

I'm not overrating this movie when giving it a ten stars. I follow this website and its movie reviews for more than 6 years and I 've never ever had the feeling to write a movie review. This is my very first one. I'm only writing it because this movie made me display some tears from the middle of it to the end. This is the most beautiful movie I've ever seen, actually not the movie, actually this is the most beautiful story that I've ever seen. It express human feelings in a way that for me who wrote this story is undeniably a genius. It shows how every family should be, its a real life lesson. It shows how each person on a family should feel like being a driver in the car of his life and steering and paying attention all the time when steering to the right or to the left to make sure you are not really hurting anyone's feelings. This movie shows that be happy is not the most important thing in life but trying to be happy is.

The thread that suggests that the family hated Meredith states a good point. Everett's left brain is saying "This girl is a bad match; she is trouble". The fact that another thread that suggests Everett is boring may point to his lack of game but that is irrelevant. The left and right brains could not agree about her. When ellysway stated that Everett did not love her, be that as it may, the best reply is that it is exactly the way Meredith feels about him. If that is true, at least they are emotionally on the same page. Regardless, Sybil's real concern was that Everett would be miserable and if they did marry, it would end badly. She would always put her career first. By putting her own needs before Everett, he will always be second fiddle and will grow to resent that. He would feel neglected. Therefore, it was better to end things sooner rather than later when it would be messier. Everett needed to see clearly that there cannot be a future with Meredith.