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The Big Chill Movie Review

The Big Chill is a 1983 drama film directed by Lawrence Kasdan and starring Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt and Kevin Kline. It is a solid, but not great Best Picture nominee.

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“I haven’t met that many happy people in my life.

How do they act?“

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A group of seven former college friends gather for a weekend reunion at a South Carolina vacation home after the funeral of another of their college friends. This film is all about the boredom and indecisiveness that younger middle class people from the 70s and 80s experienced, and they still experience it to some degree today, but the movie is all about this specific time period and country.

I usually live for dialogue-driven movies, but here I did not particularly care. The movie did not go anywhere, which maybe was the point, but still I would have liked to have seen at least some message or statement about these people’s troubled, empty lives, but I got nothing. The movie ends as it starts, the only difference being that some of them hooked up with others.

Yes, the whole will they, won’t they narrative in the second half did not appeal to me personally. I find it gross that friends would even think about this thing, let alone do it. The whole story about it being the time and that the biological clock is ticking for the women was well explored and grounded in reality, but still the movie was overly concerned with the romantic entanglements and not enough with the passing of their friend and what it means to them.

The Big Chill featured an enormous cast of who’s who from this decade. You’ve got Glenn Close in an Oscar-nominated, strong role. She’s great. You also have William Hurt as the most different guy from the bunch and the darkest one in personality. Jeff Goldblum is obviously the funniest, though he did not fit in with the others. May Kay Place is excellent in the best-written role while Kevin Kline is the most fun as this famous stunt actor.

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That gag with the car was very funny, but otherwise I wouldn’t call the movie a dramedy at all. It’s pure drama. It is elevated in its setting trappings by great cinematography and a solid soundtrack, but the soundtrack also was overly rock-inspired and excessively used to the point that the movie started resembling a jukebox musical. The movie was nominated for three Oscars, but I would hardly call them deserved.