C+Directed by Lawrence Kasdan Starring Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, and William Hurt Review by Jon Kissel |  |
For obvious reasons, I’ve always confused The Big Chill with The Ice Storm, and the latter was the one I happened to watch first. Despite their titles and the shared presence of Kevin Kline, these films aren’t exactly similar, but Ang Lee’s acid-tipped recreation of the late 70’s was exactly what I wanted out of Lawrence Kasdan’s star-studded tale of 60’s hippies turned into 80’s yuppies. It turns out the Big Chill has little to say about the withering of youthful idealism or getting stuck in historical patterns, and it has even less to say about the Reagan-era time period it takes place in. That doesn’t make it dull, which it isn’t, but it does make it slight and something of a waste of all the considerable talent on the screen.
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