Review of The Big Chill (1983) by Edith N — 01 Apr 2007

This movie has a great cast and a great soundtrack, so I'm giving it a marginally positive review. However, if you took away either Jeff Goldblum or Kevin Kline, I probably wouldn't. These people don't have the lives they expected to. Big deal; who does?

What is this fixation people seem to have with basically normal people whining? There's [i]Catcher in the Rye[/i], a book I've always hated, and there's this. I see now why a song was knocked off a top-five list in [i]High Fidelity[/i] because of its association with this movie.

Okay, and why in [i]Gods'[/i] names are Kevin Kline's shorts so short? It's a little creepy, and I like Kevin Kline. We've got Glenn Close's enormous '80s hair, Kevin Kline's bitty '80s shorts, and everyone els'e pretentious '80s angst. Also, I really hate that stupid "Jeremiah was a bullfrog" song and always have.

Yes. I'm kind of in a bad mood going into this anyway. However, I'm not sure a better mood would make a difference. If anything, had I started out in a better mood, it would be ruined by this movie. I want my complaining movie characters to have harder lives. If they were spending the movie upset about the, you know, [i]suicide of their friend at the beginning of the movie[/i] (Kevin Costner's best role; he's a corpse), I could sympathize. But no. They've sold out, and they're upset about it.

Then again, you don't see them ending the movie by planning to make a difference or anything.