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copyright ©1999-2002
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
As students at the University
of Michigan back in the 60s, Sarah, Harold, Sam, Michael, Meg, Karen,
Nick and Alex were housemates and best friends. Fast forward a decade
and a half, and most have shed the ideals of their hippie youths and
settled into comfortable, secure, affluent lives. Sarah’s a doctor,
Harold a running-shoe entrepreneur, and the two are happily married,
with kids, living in a big old beautiful house. Meg’s a high-powered
corporate lawyer, Sam’s a full-fledged TV star, Michael a successful
writer for People magazine, Karen a suburban housewife-mom. Only Nick
and Alex have avoided yuppie-dom and the big sell-out – not that it’s
done either one of them much good. When the latter kills himself, the
remaining seven friends find themselves gathered together after the
funeral for a spontaneous reunion under Sarah and Harold’s roof. It’s
a weekend filled with reminiscing and revelations, as the old group
finds themselves forced to take a good, hard look at where they’ve
been, where they’re at, what’s become of themselves and their
relationships with one another – and whether any one of them is even
remotely close to being happy about where they’re heading.
Review
Sigh. I love The Big Chill, and I don’t
care if it’s not cool to say so. Sure, it’s talky, occasionally
whiny, and frequently self-important. And the scene where Glenn Close’s
Sarah offers up her husband’s services for her baby-mad single pal Meg
is both fairly unbelievable and not a small amount ewwwwwww
disturbing. But The Big Chill is also witty, funny, sad, and
joyous, and if the characters occasionally seem self-indulgently
introspective – analyzing their individual lives to bits as if their
every little stupid action if of universal consequence – well, to me,
that’s part of what makes the characters so believable, so much like
people I know (if I’m being honest, most especially yours truly) …
which may be why when I find myself laughing at them – and I do, often
– I’m partially also laughing at myself, at the way we all have of
occasionally taking ourselves too seriously. The cast is superb,
especially Glenn Close, Kevin Kline (if you can get past the bizarro,
pseudo-Southern accent), William Hurt and Jeff Goldblum (who, in the
sort of role he’s recycled who knows how many times in his career
since, is at his most charmingly, wittily smarmy as
"journalist" Michael). Most of all, there’s no other movie I
can think of that so perfectly captures that cozy, half-asleep,
late-night, anything-goes, talk-uncensored camaraderie that for me, at
least, epitomizes everything that was so lovely and amazing and good
about the college years. —reviewed by
Y. Sun
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