The 25 most insufferable movie families

This quirk-infested comedy is built around the multifaceted travails of the Hoover family, a barely functioning unit that includes a despondent brother-in-law (Steve Carell) and a profane, heroin-snorting grandfather (Alan Arkin). When they hit the road in their VW Microbus to take their youngest (Abigail Breslin) to a beauty pageant, each individual experiences a major tragedy and a small triumph (save for grandpa; he dies). It’s an indie-film “Vacation” that believes its characters are loveable weirdoes, when they’re actually little more than cynically constructed one-trick caricatures.

Thomas Bezucha’s Christmas dramedy drags a strait-laced Sarah Jessica Parker into the den of ersatz whimsy that is the Stone household. They’re a too-loving, too-supportive, too-too collection of upper class Connecticut liberals who wind up feeling more like elaborate character sketches than actual human beings. Parker’s standoffishness feels like desperate self-preservation in reaction to the impossible-to-take eccentrics played by Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Craig T. Nelson and Elizabeth Reaser. It’s emotional terrorism of the most jarring order.

Jay Roach’s “Meet the Parents” was a perfectly serviceable, sporadically hilarious family comedy that unfortunately made guaranteed sequel money. Given that they’d milked the awkward, future in-law relationship between Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro for all it was worth, the producers decided to double down on the zaniness. Enter Bernie and Roz Focker, played to the nerve-jangling hilt by Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand. Whatever sympathy or affection you had for the characters of the first film gets wiped out entirely within the first 30 minutes.

Ah the negligent, frighteningly multitudinous McCallisters. Their penchant for leaving their youngest son, Kevin (Macaulay Culkin), behind while jetting off on luxury Christmas vacations is actually one of their finer qualities. In both “Home Alone” movies, the extended brood comes off as a toxic mixture of privilege and self-absorption. It’s no wonder Kevin is a sadistic brat who enjoys torturing thieves and low-wage pizza deliverymen.

Woody Allen followed up the Best Picture-winning “Annie Hall” with this deathly serious drama about a wealthy family tormented by a past full of pain and abject cruelty. It’s an acutely observed, deftly crafted film (Allen’s second collaboration with master cinematographer Gordon Willis), but these are such tremendously unhappy people (save for Maureen Stapleton as E.G. Marshall’s uncouth new lover), and Allen seems to regard them more as chess pieces than flesh-and-blood humans. He lacks the nuance of the writers — Bergman, Chekov and O’Neill — he’s emulating. He’d get better at this later in his career (e.g. “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Husbands and Wives”), but this is a drama of unmitigated woe suffered by people you’d avoid in real life.

A work of weaponized whimsy, Peter Hedges’ comedy stars Steve Carell as a widowed journalist who heads off with his three daughters to an annual family gathering in Rhode Island, where he falls inconveniently head over heels for his brother’s new girlfriend (Juliette Binoche). There’s potential for real prickly drama here, but Hedges is far too enamored of his eccentric supporting characters to exploit it, subjecting us instead to atrocities like a family talent show where we get to see Dane Cook sing “Let My Love Open the Door." A great cast including Dianne Wiest, John Mahoney, Norbert Leo Butz, and Amy Ryan is criminally wasted on this cloying garbage.

Suburbia was a novel idea when Jean Kerr published her bestselling collection of essays detailing her Manhattan-dwelling family’s struggle with this brave new domestic world. The film adaptation starring Doris Day and David Niven may prove a little more sympathetic today (the family’s unplanned NYC exodus is prompted by rising rents), but the Mackays will always be a blandly off-center clan notable for its ownership of an outsized English sheepdog. It’s little wonder the film spawned an equally blah sitcom.

The Buellers are a singularly awful family. Ferris (Matthew Broderick) is a spoiled, manipulative brat whose bedroom is decked out with state-of-the-art technology, but he’s raw that his sister has a car and he has to bum rides off his best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck, whom he browbeats a regular basis). Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) is so resentful of her brother’s sway over their parents she skips a day of school so she can catch Ferris playing hooky. Meanwhile, mom and dad (Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward) are vapid suburbanites who have no idea they’re raising a pair of sociopaths. 

Robert Redford’s film of Judith Guest’s celebrated novel depicts a familial meltdown in suburban Chicago. The Jarretts ( Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, and Timothy Hutton) are upper-upper-middle-class WASPs who haven’t recovered from the accidental death of their eldest son, who also happened to be mom’s favorite. The surviving son’s subsequent suıcide attempt is an embarrassment to the mother; keeping up appearances matters more to her than the boy’s health. Moore is such a self-absorbed ghoul that you want to cheer when she clears out of the house at the film’s conclusion. This is an excellent film but one with a clear rooting interest.

The Trapp Family Singers are true heroes of World War II, but be honest: The clan’s unremitting gleefulness would drive you bonkers after little more than an hour spent in its company. This could be why the film has inspired a hugely popular string of sing-a-long screenings; the Trapps are far more palatable when you treat the show as camp instead of a prestigious Best Picture winner. That said, “So Long, Farewell” is still a challenge.

Robin Williams stars as a monstrously irresponsible father whose moronic antics — e.g. hosting an animal-populated birthday party in the family's pricey San Francisco home — forces his saint of a wife (Sally Field) to divorce him. To gain shared custody of his children, Williams infiltrates his ex-spouse’s home by adopting the persona of a female housekeeper. This is a horror film.

The undead Cullens of “Twilight” should be cool. They’re freaking vampires and pretty damn attractive ones to boot! But the films hew too closely to Stephenie Meyer’s YA novels; they’re sexless bores that somehow make being a bloodsucker look like a chaste drag. These films made Robert Pattinson a star, but we didn’t know how rakishly charming he could be until he started making indie films like “Good Time." The Cullens should be having the kinky time of their lives, but they’d rather play vampire baseball instead. Catherine Deneuve wept.

WASPs ahoy! Empathy is hard to come by in Burr Steers’ coming-of-age comedy about a 17-year-old jerk (Kieran Culkin) whose chronic inability to remain enrolled in prep schools gets him shunted out to New York to work construction for his wealthy godfather (Jeff Goldblum). Culkin capably captures the snittiness of a trust-fund case, but Steers views the character as a rebellious hero. While he’s certainly the product of a lousy upbringing (his father’s schizophrenic and his mother’s a drunk), he hasn’t come close to earning his misanthropy. These characters are victims of their extreme wealth. This isn’t a tragedy; it’s just a waste.

A comfortable, if not altogether wealthy, New England family gathers for Thanksgiving. Trivial secrets and lies are revealed. The kids (Noah Wyle, Julianne Moore, Michael Vartan and Laurel Holloman) seem to have it out for their pops (Roy Scheider), who inexplicably fibs about shooting the turkey they consume. Blythe Danner evinces mannered dismay. But nothing much of note happens, which leaves you wondering why this knockout cast bothered to congregate for writer-director Bart Freundlich. This is “Interiors” on valium.

The Skywalkers have, on balance, been a whiny detriment to that galaxy far, far away. The original trilogy revolved around a son cleaning up a mess created by his father. The prequel trilogy was about the creating of said mess. The new trilogy hinges on the son clumsily creating a new menace. Even the generally faultless Leia has to claim some responsibility here; she sent Kylo Ren to study with Luke. The only character whose behavior is beyond reproach throughout (thus far) eight films is R2-D2. No wonder he shut down in between the second and third trilogies.

The Jordans of Todd Solondz’s pitch-black comedy “Happiness” are an absolute disaster: Joy (Jane Adams) is horrendously unlucky in love; Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) is a successful author whose neuroses lead her to date terrible men; Trish (Cynthia Stevenson) seems to be the outlier in that she’s married to successful psychiatrist (Dylan Baker), but unbeknownst to her, he’s a pedōphile with designs on their 11-year-old son’s classmate. If you’re not on Solondz’s misanthropic wavelength, this is a punishing 139-minute sit.

“American Beauty” won a raft of Oscars for depicting with total disdain the ennui of successful suburbanites. The Burnham family is skidding toward separation: Lester (Kevin Spacey) is unhappy at work and wants to screw his daughter’s best friend; Caroyln (Annette Bening) is carrying on an affair with a real estate colleague; Jane (Thora Birch) is in love with their neighbor’s delinquent, pseudo-intellectual son. Slather this with luminous Conrad Hall cinematography and a beautiful Thomas Newman score, and this smug satire works on first blush. Try to watch it again, and you’re crying uncle by the time Lester starts lifting weights.

Jared Hess first inflicted his calculatedly quirky worldview on moviegoers with this sleeper hit about the eccentric Dynamite clan. Napoleon (Jon Heder) is the focus of the story, but Hess spends plenty of time with Kip (Aaron Ruell) and Rico (Jon Gries), which, depending on your threshold for forced whimsy, is either a bevy of laughs or cause to run shrieking from the theater. They’re supposed to be the weird family down the street that you love hearing stories about, but Hess drowns them in banal absurdities.

James V. Hart’s screenplay about a middle-aged, career-obsessed Peter Pan (Robin Williams) who’s forced to return to Neverland to rescue his children seemed tailor-made for Steven Spielberg in 1991. There was just one problem: The solution to Pan’s crisis is to spend more time with his children, which is practically a luxury for most hard-working parents. That Pan’s son is a holy terror might have more to do with the patriarch being a jerk when he is around, but this concept eludes Spielberg, which leaves us with a portrait of an irreparably broken family.

Steven Spielberg’s first contact masterpiece has acquired a problematic reputation over the years due to Roy Neary’s decision to hop a ride on the alien mothership without his wife and three children. But Spielberg makes it plain early on that Neary has scant connection to his family; they’d rather play miniature golf than see “Pinocchio” for cryin’ out loud! It's a tremendously unhappy unit, so it’s for the best that Neary gets the hell out of the galaxy. These people will eventually get the bland, doting father they deserve.

Insufferableness, and worse, is the point of Bo Goldman’s screenplay about a direly unhappy family in the throes of collapse. George (Albert Finney) is the philandering husband. Faith (Diane Keaton) is his long-suffering wife. Their marriage would’ve been dissolved long ago, but they struggle to keep it together because of their three daughters. This is a devastating depiction of a failed union. You want out of this movie early on, but Alan Parker and his brilliant cast keep you absorbed until the literally punishing finale.

Tracy Letts is a treasure, but this Pulitzer Prize-winning play about an unruly Oklahoma family takes a jackhammer to the most tolerant viewer’s nerves. It’s a wild, incestuous yarn that makes Tennessee Williams’ dramas look like episodes of “Ozzie and Harriet." The film version stars Meryl Streep as the vitriolic matriarch who presides over a post-funeral dinner that goes about as horribly astray as any family dinner in recorded history. The Westons are wretched people. The histrionics may be dazzling on stage, but they grate like crazy in front of a camera.

Wes Anderson specializes in family comedies, but he hit a bum note with this tale of three brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman) seeking enlightenment in India. This was a transitional film for Anderson (landing between “The Life Aquatic” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox”), so the self-centeredness of the characters is excusable in retrospect, but at the time it felt like the twee-adjacent director had run aground creatively. Scorsese had to make “New York, New York” to get to “Raging Bull," right? This is that kind of movie.

The brilliance of Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” is that it both spoke to and satirized Baby Boomers’ contempt for their parents. Nichols (assisted by screenwriters Buck Henry and Calder Willingham) evokes this contempt by portraying Benjamin Braddock’s parents (William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson) as two exceptionally shrill individuals. Benjamin has no direction or ambition, while his parents are irritatingly eager to push him into a conventional line of work. At a certain point, you realize they just want him out of the house; the longer he lingers, the greater an embarrassment he becomes to them.

“Terms of Endearment” would’ve made this list if a writer-director of Robert Harling’s magnitude had made it. Fortunately, James L. Brooks landed that assignment in 1983 and delivered a finely nuanced Best Picture winner in the process. Alas, Harling, the playwriting clod guilty of penning “Steel Magnolias," found his way onto the sequel, resulting in the two-hour-plus episode of “Designing Women” you prayed you’d never see. Shirley MacLaine attacks Aurora Greenway with the same ferocity she brought to the first movie, but her adversarial relationship with her grandchildren is grating beyond belief. Harling mistakes bıtchiness for character.