THE BIG CHILL (1983) *1/2 Self-indulgent naval-gazing by a bunch of characters who lacked the insight and courage to make good choices, and whine that the bad ones didn't work out too perfectly. It works better as a film, at times. Lawrence Kasdan cuts to radically different backgrounds effectively, maybe once or twice too often. The opening credits funereal collage set to a musical background of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is magnificent, and endows the film with a gravitas that is so thoroughly subsequently squandered as to be entirely underserved. The dialogue may well be of a magnitude to confound teenage stoners, but you would think that adults could have moved on to something more substantive, stoned or not. In fact it's the dope that gives the film what glimpses of credibility it does enjoy--depicting normal, boring, characters as willing imbibers in a strange whiff of a sort of radicalism now more often reserved for the truly socially initiated and downtrodden. The dope and the music. Whenever Kasdan realizes that no one could possibly be willing to put up with any more nonsensical dialogue in the continuing vein (which is approximately every five minutes), he cleverly breaks things up with a nice pop song. Pop was more than a bit better then, and more varied than that, but some of us prefer our Percy Sledge and Aretha Franklin unaccompanied by visuals of white people doing dishes. Or anyone doing dishes, or anything else! It's inappropriate to lean so heavily on self-induced radio, and then call yourself a film. It would have all been disaster, if not for the actors. It's an impressive ensemble, and while they're interrupted in turn, before being able to try to do anything impressive with the script (probably a blessing), it has to be said that no one does a bad job. I guess Jeff Goldblum's character is the most believable, and William Hurt gets the most mileage out of his (though not nearly as much as he should--does it strike anyone else that this character is the least likely to have served in 'Nam?). It's a movie about selling out, and then pretending that you couldn't have done any better. If you're forced to watch it, make sure to laugh more than you're supposed to.
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