BEFORE: William Hurt carries over from "The Accidental Tourist", as does the director, Lawrence Kasdan. This seems like another one of those movies that everyone in my generation has seen, yet I haven't. Exactly the type of film I like to cross off the list.
I guess I'm in South Carolina tonight - while TCM is lolling in Spain ("The Adventures of Don Juan") and the French Riviera ("The Red Shoes", "To Catch a Thief") before moving on to the Middle East ("Arabian Nights", "Topkapi"). I've seen "The Man Who Would Be King" and "Lawrence of Arabia", of course, so I'm abstaining again.
THE PLOT: A group of seven former college friends gather for a weekend reunion at a posh South Carolina winter house after the funeral of one of their friends.
AFTER: Pardon the pun, but this one just sort of left me cold. It does count as a "relationship" picture because the seven friends spent more time bed-hopping than grieving over their friend, though. Hey, maybe that's their way of grieving, celebrating life by getting busy. Oh, sure, let me "comfort" you in your time of sorrow...
But it's really a bunch of self-centered yuppies (and this was the 80's, so that term does apply) moaning about their mid-life troubles. All the while playing the soft soul hits of their 60's youth (on record players, one assumes, or maybe they just have that piped in...). Can you believe how much money we make in a year? Can you believe we're friendly with cops? Give me a break. I was wishing the cops would raid the house and find their pot, coke and quaaludes, putting the whole lot of them out of my misery.
I guess if you put 7 forty-somethings together in a house, they're all going to seize the opportunity to switch partners and get busy? Yeah, right. This constant un-coupling and re-coupling was just exhausting. That's what's holding these people back, besides the recreational drug use - they're too tired from sleeping around and their emotional soul-searching to get out and accomplish things. "Nah, I guess I won't open up that nightclub after all." "No, I'm not ready to make an investment." Come ON, this was the go-go 80's! Insider trading, coke-fueled thrown-together business plans, gotta move, gotta drive real fast!
The people who practiced "Love the one you're with" in the 60's grew up to be wracked with doubt and regret in the 80's, apparently. Pining over lost loves, worrying about their ticking biological clocks, and trying to wring one last roll in the hay from their circle of friends before their sex-drive completely vanishes. It all seemed rather desperate, and quite pointless.
They're all confused by their friend's suicide, and wonder why he wandered around for years, from job to job. Well, none of them are happy, so if bouncing around isn't the answer, and staying put's not the answer, and getting married's not the answer, and having kids is not the answer, what the hell is the answer? Doesn't anyone here know how to play this game?
Who knew the Rolling Stones sounded so good when played on a church organ? That was probably my favorite part...
Also starring Kevin Kline (last seen in "Sophie's Choice"), Tom Berenger (last seen in "Inception"), Glenn Close (last seen in "The World According to Garp"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Cats & Dogs"), Jobeth Williams (last seen in "Kramer vs. Kramer"), Mary Kay Place (last heard in "Shrek Forever After"), Meg Tilly (last seen in "The Two Jakes").
RATING: 4 out of 10 college sweatshirts
Ah, but you left out one notable castmember: Kevin Costner as the corpse. Lots of flashback scenes had been shot in which the characters are interacting with their deceased friend, but none of them made the final cut.
ReplyDelete"Big Chill" ages about as well as "The Graduate." The specific audience that's out there seeing movies at the specific time that this movie is released will eat it up. These were the same people buying furniture upholstered in powder blue and hospital green. Fast-forward ten years and nobody can work out why this flick seemed like such a big deal to those people.
And every generation gets its own batch of navel-gazing movies. I think ours was "Reality Bites," which even at its time was embarrassing and self-absorbed.
I'm trying to think of a movie in this genre that really works. If your basic theme is "characters gather and discuss how complicated and difficult their lives are," you have to know that the audience's initial reaction will be "What the hell do these people have to complain about?"
Which isn't to say that problems are problems no matter how rosy your life might appear to outsiders. It's a screenwriting challenge, though.
I'm reminded of an awful, awful series of commercials for a financial services company. In each ad, a Thurston Howell-type character would be engaged in the most obnoxious "We Are The 1%" activity imaginable -- struggling to open a bottle of white wine while a dinner party converses in the background, hitting a bucket of golf balls at a country club, putting on enormous diamond earrings -- and complaining to camera about how much they're stressing out over what they should do with their $500,000 retirement account now that they've switched to an higher-paying job. "Life isn't supposed to be this hard," Diamond Woman sighs.
Oddly, they stopped running these ads after the economy tanked.
I do like this movie. It's hard for me not to anticipate good things from any movie with Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, or Jeff Goldblum in it. All three? Good.
(It also features a great line. Goldblum is a PEOPLE magazine staff writer and phones his editor for an extension on his current assignment, which is an inspirational piece about a blind baton-twirler. "What's two or three days? Do you think she's going to regain her sight over the weekend?")