Welcome to another round of Oscar Film Journal shenanigans, here at Enuffa.com!
Heading to the 1980s once again for a film that I'd seen once a long time ago but needed to rewatch in order to write about it. It's Lawrence Kasdan's ensemble piece The Big Chill, starring Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Berenger, William Hurt, Mary Kay Place, JoBeth Williams, Meg Tilly, and infamously an uncredited Kevin Costner as various unidentifiable body part closeups of a dressed corpse.
The film takes place over a weekend in South Carolina, when a group of old college buddies reunites for a friend's funeral. Alex Marshall committed suicide for reasons the film doesn't disclose, and the group decide to spend a couple nights at the summer home of Harold (Kline) and Sarah (Close). During those two days they talk, reminisce, argue, and wonder how they all went from idealistic 60s college kids to disillusioned 80s thirty-somethings. Each of them has their issues and personality quirks; Sarah had an affair with Alex five years earlier and feels guilty that it hurt their friendship, Harold has become a successful, sometimes unscrupulous businessman and rather conservative, Michael (Goldblum) is a womanizer who works for People magazine but hates it, Sam (Berenger) has a hit TV cop show but his marriage has recently ended, Nick (Hurt) is a former TV psychologist and veteran who is now impotent and addicted to cocaine, Karen (Williams) is in a loveless marriage and has long carried a torch for Sam, Meg (Place) is chronically single but wants to have a baby, and Chloe (Tilly) is Alex's girlfriend who seems too emotionally immature to deal with the loss she's just experienced.
Kasdan and co-writer Barbara Benedek drew from their own experiences as thirty-something baby boomers and seemed to also be inspired by another film, Return of the Secaucus 7, which came out in 1980. The script is very much a "day in the life" kind of screenplay, where we spend intimate time with these characters but there isn't a proper three-act structure or payoff. The dialogue bounces between feeling true to life and Hollywood saccharine, and at times brought to mind The Breakfast Club, for example when the group is washing dishes to a Temptations song and it turns into a dance number. I'm pretty sure groups of friends don't do this in reality, and it felt a little too cutesy. I wonder if John Hughes was influenced by this film. There are also two references to another film Kasdan wrote, Raiders of the Lost Ark. One is direct (the Kline character sings the theme song), the other is indirect (Sam and his TV show bear a striking resemblance to Tom Selleck and Magnum P.I., which prevented Selleck from playing Indiana Jones).
The performances are all fine. Kline plays Harold as the responsible adult in the room who's lost touch with his idealism. Goldblum plays Goldblum, charming but neurotic. Close is the one who grieves most for Alex. Hurt is a train wreck waiting to happen. Berenger is the hot TV actor but surprisingly lacks the confidence to match. Mary Kay Place might be the standout, imbuing Meg with a genuine warmth despite her prolonged bouts of loneliness.
But I wish the film had more to say than "Adulting sucks." In the end that seems to be the main thrust. Young people are free-thinking and unburdened by cynicism, while age and responsibility tend to bring them crashing down to earth. It's certainly a relatable topic, but not the most profound. The characters imply that this gradual realization is at least partly what drove Alex to kill himself, but we never learn more than that.
I enjoyed The Big Chill enough to recommend it, but Kasdan would go on to make a much better and more complex ensemble piece eight years later with Grand Canyon.
I give it *** out of ****.
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