"Nothing" new in this warm, familiar holiday comedy/drama

A family converges for a holiday reunion, complete with Christmas songs, romantic angst, serious illness, lavish meals, long-held quarrels and an outsider uptight career-woman type — eyed with suspicion by the rest of the family — whose uptightness is signaled by the fact that she wears her hair in a tight bun. Yes, Alfredo De Villa's "Nothing Like the Holidays," is remarkably like the 2005 holiday comedy/drama "The Family Stone." Shift the family's ethnicity from WASP to Puerto Rican, the location from New England to Chicago, and the tight-bunned outsider from Sarah Jessica Parker to Debra Messing, and it's almost a remake.

But familiarity is part of the pleasure of holiday movies, and "Nothing Like the Holidays" gets by not on originality, but on chemistry and warmhearted charm — you genuinely believe that the family Rodriguez, for all their issues, love each other. But there's enough baggage to fill several Santa sacks on this holiday visit to Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Father Edy (Alfred Molina) is a womanizer who's keeping a secret from his suspicious wife Anna (Elizabeth Peña), who wants a divorce; brother Jesse (Freddy Rodríguez) has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and is reunited with the girl he once loved (Melonie Diaz); yuppie brother Mauricio (John Leguizamo) is trying to convince his even-more-yuppie wife Sarah (Messing) to start a family; sister Roxanna (Vanessa Ferlito) is trying to hide the fact that her Hollywood career isn't as successful as her parents think it is; and there's a troublesome tree out front that really, really needs to be cut down.

All of this (well, most of it; some of it gets conveniently forgotten) is efficiently sorted out in 99 minutes. Screenwriters Rick Najera and Alison Swan blend specifically Puerto Rican traditions — the parranda, a raucous evening of holiday caroling — with holiday situations and dilemmas common to all. (Shouldn't one, having just arrived on a holiday visit, remove one's Bluetooth before greeting one's father-in-law? Discuss.) And the ensemble cast, ably led by Molina's warmth and Peña's fire, settle in and create a family before our eyes.

Nothing about "Nothing Like the Holidays" will surprise a viewer, but then again, sometimes there's something comforting in knowing exactly what's under the tree — and that family love can loosen even the tightest bun.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com