Ultimately, Family Plot may be more fun to think about than to see—or at least, to see for the fourth time. There are moments of quite stunning intensity…. But some of the principle action sequences seem relatively lax and unfocused, and I suspect that Family Plot figures only half-heartedly as an adventure film. Indeed, it mistrusts adventure, as the best Hitchcock movies often do. Its central position is that a healthy respect for love and money offers better guidance through this vale of tears than does the secret shudder down the spine of life lived recklessly for beauty and thrills. That's practical philosophy. Like Bresson, like Ozu, Hitchcock constructs a cinema of philosophic principles.

In this respect, Family Plot, which some have praised for its hilarity, may just be Hitchcock's most serious movie—or one of his most serious, or anything but his funniest and most erotic. It deals in private human relations on several levels….

There is nothing too original in the notion that the Hitchcock movie titles carry a glamour all their own, and that with a few exceptions they are as witty as anything that gets into the films. Sometimes they do get into the films, virtually sum up the films on several levels at once….

"Plot" vs. "pattern." You can feel the release from ominous solemnity. You can appreciate the pun, and knowing enough about Hitchcock, you can guess the pun will count. But it must be understood that the habit of mind involved in using a pun also counts, and that it reflects not only upon graveyard matters and the convolutions of a story, but also upon the idea of the "family," which is really the key to the film. (p. 21)

[There] are some chills, and there is a serious theme as well. Old Julia may not be the murderess she is in Victor Canning's novel; but she committed a crime years before, when she removed her wayward sister's son….

The colors that dominate in Family Plot—deep red, white, black, occasionally green—create a continuing moral interplay of the most powerful intimations of death, life, purity, and passion behind the semi-social comedy up front. Similarly, the cross references between Blanche and Fran, and between Blanche/George and Fran/Arthur, do more than just establish a comparison by contrast. They help extend a context in which everything somehow connects. Not so much for the specifics of connection as for the idea of connection, an idea that when necessary can raise the energies of a zany missing-persons plot into near sublimity.

I doubt that such potential makes Family Plot a master-piece, or even a near miss…. The central comedy-fright sequence, the uncontrollable automobile, fails sufficiently to scare (me, at least) or to amuse, and the suspense tricks associated with it seem derivative almost to the point of embarrassment. Enough of those things together depress a movie…. The revelation of Family Plot within this context is not its excellence but its benevolence, a benevolence that even its cardboard villain…. has trouble dissociating himself from…. As the film works out from mystery into certainty and from darkness into light, it discovers prospects for casual good feeling that through the memories of generations extend even beyond the grave. (p. 22)