Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan packed his 1991 film “Grand Canyon” with Big Questions. Why is there so much violence in the world? Is society getting much worse, much faster than anyone imagined? Who on God’s green earth would choose to live in the City of Angels?
The biggest question left by the ambitious film remains unanswered. Where did the great Kasdan go?
The man who directed “Body Heat,” “The Big Chill” and “The Accidental Tourist” and helped write “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Empire Strikes Back” all but vanished as a creative force after “Grand Canyon.”
His follow-up feature, “Wyatt Earp” underwhelmed, and he’s only directed three movies since then. The most recent of the trio, “Dreamcatcher,” stands as one of the shoddiest mainstream horror movies in recent memory, no small feat given the genre’s general welfare.
That makes “Grand Canyon” a true curiosity, one so stuffed with meaty ruminations it’s worth a fresh look.
The ensemble cast is led by Kevin Kline as Mack, an L.A.-based noble heart saved from a car jacking by a tow truck driver named Simon (Danny Glover).
The two share little in common beyond their sense of humanity, but Mack can’t let Simon walk out of his life after their chance meeting. Mack’s preoccupation with Simon distracts him from a crumbling marriage and the flirtations of a young co-worker (Mary Louise-Parker).
Mack’s wife (Mary McDonnell) has a fixation of her own. She discovered an abandoned baby while out jogging and now wants to adopt the child even though her oldest biological child is near college age.
“Grand Canyon” never hides its out-sized aspirations. It puts them out on full display and dares you to mock them. At times, the crush of calibrated plot twists and existential exchanges feel like a tarp thrown over the story. But soon it’s clear those themes are the movie, the fabric of the questions Kasdan and co-writer Meg Kasdan (his wife) can’t help but ask.
A sterling cast, including a restrained Steve Martin as a blowhard movie executive, never let “Grand Canyon” succumb to its excesses. They’re collectively nimble even as the story piles on one coincidences atop another twist of fate. And Kline doesn’t fall back on his near-genius comic chops here. He’s dazed, confused and open to what life has to offer him, even if he’s a little slow on the uptake.
“Grand Canyon” marks the work of an auteur so confident in his gifts he’s willing to stretch them like taffy to ask questions with no easy answers. It’s hard not to throw one more onto the pile – will we ever see that Kasdan again?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have to disagree.
The movie always struck me as an attempt to emulate the tres chic New York bashing in movies prevalent at the time – as if they were jealous that LA wasn’t being recognized as nearly the hell hole New York was then. The wads of “wise sayings” reminded me of those little books full of trite aphorisms that teenage girls buy at the metaphysical store. The handkerchief one was taken from the Ian Flemming book “You Only Live Twice”.
There’s certainly a precious air to the movie, and the film conveniently packages The Very Worst Things About LA for our collective disapproval. But the film still casts a spell for me, and I give Kasdan credit for managing to bring so many elements into the story without losing me as a viewer. I also happen to dig every actor in it. Even Glover, whose career has really tanked (and whose political diatribes beggar belief) is at his sturdy, Everyman best here.
“Grand Canyon” is very self-indulgent with its never ending navel gazing and tiresome speeches. However, I do like the Steve Martin character and think it would have been a better movie had it focused solely on him. The other characters could have jumped into the Grand Canyon for all I cared.
Paula,
I can’t really disagree … Kline’s character is so eager to do good it hurts. But … it all worked for me. Taken as a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it while acknowledging its flaws.
Haven’t seen it, but it seems like one of those movies that thinks itself a lot deeper than it is. “Multiple midlife crises and a bunch of coincidences” is second only to “a plot based on Gnosticism” as a symptom of unwarranted intellectual pretensions.
As for New York-bashing in movies, I for one vastly prefer that to New Yorkers’ bizarre obsession with telling us how great their stupid town is. If you think your hometown is the universe, you’re a cornpone, unless its name is New Yorkâand then, no matter how much public urination you endure in the course of a day, you’re a sophisticate the rest of us are supposed to emulate.