Grand Canyon

source: Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

If there is a hell, it contains a screening room in which GRAND CANYON is playing over and over again on an eternal loop. One would hope that the presence of so many marvelous actors - Danny Glover, Alfre Woodard, Kevin Kline, Mary Louise Parker - would help make up for the presences of Mary McDonnell (whose penance is to watch her own films for all eternity)... But, no. Apparently they injected those other actors with a serum made from McDonnell. The entire affair is pretentious, overblown, insulting (if you are deaf or know anyone who is, be prepared for your blood to boil at the ludicrous TDD scene). GRAND CANYON is filled with obnoxious, self-involved people, but never gives us a reason to like/understand/sympathize with or even tolerate them. With rare exception, they are insufferable losers that the gene pool would be better off without. There's no plot to speak of, no character development (these people won't EVER develop), no break-out performance and the most arch writing you'll ever encounter in a film. The best thing about GRAND CANYON? Its title. This is one large HOLE of a movie.

If anyone thinks MAGNOLIA is the most pretentious movie ever made, as Richard Dreyfuss tells Robert Shaw in JAWS: "I got that beat." This movie, about rich and poor people in Los Angeles whose lives intertwine, all discussing their own philosophies of life, takes the pretentious nasal-gazing gold medal. Lawrence Kasdan, who's written and directed modern classics like SILVERADO and THE BIG CHILL (and wrote the script to THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK based on George Lucas's story), penned this do-gooder doozy with his wife, Meg. Kevin Kline's car breaks down in Inglewood (after a Laker game) and is almost killed by gangsters; Danny Glover, as a tow truck driver, saves him; they become friends and we follow each of their (and their friends and families) lives and basically learn: we're in different sized boats in the same raging sea. Hollywood bigwigs with tons of money obviously have a lotta guilt, and the Kasdans probably wrote this to assure their diamond-studded cronies: "No matter if we're millionaires, at least WE care". Or something. This film is God-Awful. Every sentence has a POINT; every camera angle an AGENDA. "I dare you to watch this and NOT LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR LIFE", is in parentheses throughout. As one character says: "People who excel at one thing think they know about everything." I think Lawrence and Meg might have been projecting here. And, at the very end of the two-and-a-half hours of ponderous diatribes (people carrying- on as if they've had that perfect amount of alcohol)... as the cast (including Steve Martin as a film producer who, after being shot in the leg, realizes his billion dollar bank account is pointless; Mary McDonnell, whose very countenance screams "I'm Better Than All Men", playing Kline's wife who finds an abandoned baby; and Jeremy Sisto as Kline's not-spoiled but very privileged son who works with the handicapped) all stare off into the actual Grand Canyon... realizing their problems are tiny in comparison... Don't be surprised if you hear yourself screaming "JUMP!" like I did.

Oh what a condescending movie! Set in Los Angeles, the center of the universe from the POV of Hollywood filmmakers, this movie tries to be a deep social commentary on contemporary American angst. Stereotyped, smarmy characters of widely varying socio-economic backgrounds cross paths in their everyday, humdrum lives. The plot is disjointed and desultory. Numerous unimaginative plot contrivances keep the film going, like: a drive-by shooting, an abandoned baby left in the weeds, a gang of thugs intimidating a lawyer, a guy flying through the night sky over the city, a kid at summer camp. And through all these events, the one constant is the generous helping of sociological "insights" imparted through the dialogue, as characters compare notes on their life experiences. One character tells another: "When you sit on the edge of that thing (the Grand Canyon), you realize what a joke we people are; ... those rocks are laughing at me, I could tell, me and my worries; it's real humorous to that Grand Canyon". And another character pontificates about the meaning of it all: "There's a gulf in this country, an ever widening abyss between the people who have stuff and the people who don't have ... it's like this big hole has opened up in the ground, as big as the ... Grand Canyon, and what's come pouring out ... is an eruption of rage, and the rage creates violence ...". Aside from the horribly unnatural and forced dialogue, aside from the shallow, smarmy characters, aside from the dumb plot, the story's pace is agonizingly slow. Acting is uninspired and perfunctory. The film's tone is smug and self-satisfied, in the script's contempt for viewers. This was a film project approved by Hollywood suits who fancy themselves as omnipotent gurus, looking down from on high. They think their film will be a startling revelation to us lowly, unknowing movie goers, eager to learn about the real meaning of American social change.

Of all the humiliating and dehumanizing things we males do (and there are many)to score points with a female in the hopes of .... the worst is having to sit through an insipidly puerile film like, "Grand Canyon." When my intellect was not being assaulted, my sense of reason was. Such superficial and indulgent tripe can hardly be worth an hour of pleasure but what did I know? I thought I might have been wrong about it since I saw its New York opening way back when. No. It still dumb, insulting, junk. Barren, vacuous characters set in a simplistically manipulative story, one that could only be enjoyed, I think, by those still attending Junior High School, the film is an insult on virtually every level. (Except for the performance of Danny Glover, who is fab, everyone else reeks). The film is similar in its pretensions to the platitudinous excretions of "The Big Chill" only without the soundtrack and Glenn Close's overacting. I never thought I'd hate Steve Martin, but this film makes me see him for what he really is, a comic who does some acting. Yikes! And Kevin Kline shouts, "Look at me! I'm ACTING!" every moment he's on film. Double Yikes. If only I could have thrown myself into the Grand Canyon to end this torture. I am truly mystified how anyone thought this a good film. Truly. Do not waste your money renting this film.

I have to say that Grand Canyon is one of the most affecting films I've ever seen. I've watched it several times now and I still feel as I did the first time; that this film, by itself, could make up the entire curriculum of a post-graduate course in film direction. A long time ago film trailers used to promise, "It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry." That's a very trite and shorthand method of describing what Grand Canyon does. It takes you to the best places in human experience and the next moment takes you to the gates of hell. Much of the film is paced to cycle back and forth between people being close to happiness and the same people being close to horror. It's always a short step, too. Just to manage that swing with grace and without making it look false or exaggerated is directorial genius. Spoiler (of sorts) coming up. After getting the audience used to rocking back and forth through the emotional spectrum, the film throws a curve with a sequence that doesn't go from good to bad and back but instead escalates from an ordinary marital spat, through an accidental self-inflicted knife wound that may or may not require stitches, to an earthquake that has the characters run from the house. In the moment of their relief, argument forgotten, cut finger forgotten, the earthquake survived, a neighbor woman calls out that her elderly husband has collapsed. The couple rushes to his aid. I cried when I saw this sequence. I cried every time I saw it. I'm crying now. It isn't sadness that does this to me. It's not a particularly sad sequence. What tears me up is that this few minutes of film was PERFECT. That's PERFECT! Astounding. (end of spoiler) There's so much to say about Grand Canyon. It portrays relatively ordinary people experiencing epiphanies and it lets the viewer experience them vicariously. They aren't showy or overblown and there's no long pause to examine the moment carefully. The film moves on at the pace of life. Even when the characters do try to make sense of what has happened, they are uncertain of what to derive from their experience. Grand Canyon is a very human film.

"Grand Canyon" is a lot of things at once, but I found all of it completely fascinating. The characters and situations were realistic and the cast is flawless. You might find yourself crying at the movie - I did. It's a shame there was no audience for this movie, because I think it has a lot to say on several levels.

"Grand Canyon" is the grand daddy of Hollywood movies such as "Crash" that take a look at this thing called life and try to tell us whats its all about. The big problem I have with these movies, and its a big problem alright, is that the people who make these types of films aren't philosophers and their point of view on life and relationships is no better than yours or mine so, to me, these movies come across as contrived nonsense. And contrived nonsense pretty much describes "Grand Canyon", which follows the lives of several people living in different social strata -- a tow truck driver (Danny Glover), an immigration lawyer (Kevin Kline), a movie producer (Steve Martin) etc... -- and how their lives come together in different circumstances and how their lives change and how they marvel at life and how it happens and do things happen for a reason and if not why not blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda.... Again, to me, its nothing more than pretentious crap, but if you like watching movies that muse about these kinds of things then you're in for a treat with "Grand Canyon" because not only does it muse, it spews its musing like an erupting volcano.

One measurement for the greatness of a movie is, 'if it came on t.v. right now, would you want to sit there and watch it again?' My answer for the Grand Canyon is as powerful a "yes" as it would be for nearly any movie I have ever seen. There are just so many powerful moments, such an intelligent and moving story, such incredible performances. It perfectly captures the confusion and violence that were so rampant in the early nineties. But it also dramatically affirms the capacity of individuals to love, think and care. In a slight way, the movie was of its time. It partly portrays society as a balloon about to burst. Because the country was in a recession, and so void of leadership, this was true of that time. But the movie is also timeless. I think it could honestly stand up against any movie that has ever been made, and it is the most overlooked film of all time.