The Big Chill (1983)

That fashion was tragic. Thank God I wasn't born yet.

Hated it when it came out - still do.

Thank God Kevin Costner was only a corpse.

I liked Marvin Gaye playing in the intro.

Pretentious, Baby Boomer self-aggrandizing pablum.

Didn't the husband fuck the friend and it was all good? That threw me all the way off.

Loved the soundtrack and had a celeb crush on Bill Hurt but movie was meh.

Save your time and by a Motown compilation CD.

The Tilly girl came off as mentally challenged and it seemed Hurt was a creepy old man who was taking advantage of her.

I hated the movie, but Tom Berenger was HOT as fuck as the mustachioed, TV star.

Mary Kay Place for the win! (As always.)

It hasn’t aged well

William Hurt was so hot in that movie.

That baby Mary Kay Place and William Hurt conceived would now be 39. They need to have a sequel where she confronts all the male characters (fortunately all those actors are still living) and demands, "Which one of you bastards is my father?"

[quote] Loved the soundtrack and had a celeb crush on Bill Hurt

Do you know him personally? Why are you referring to him by a nickname?

R14 made me LOL.

I didn’t really “get” it because I was so young when I watched it. Same goes for “Terms of Endearment”. Went right over my tween head.

Great soundtrack and workout gear on Meg Tilly.

[quote]That baby Mary Kay Place and William Hurt conceived would now be 39.

Kevin Kline, not Hurt.

36..

I enjoyed it

Glenn Close acting with her breasts.

They were coked up

I loved it in 1983, and now it's unbearably smug. And the non-stop musical montage sequences are repetetive and cringe-inducing.

Massive rationalization.

Like a nighttime soap with good music.

Average crap.

Joan Van Ark was up for the Glenn Close role, I think that would have been a career game changer.

Williams Hurts character got his dick shot off in Vietnam so he couldn't have a baby with her.

I think this is the first movie that introduced the "white people dancing to Motown music to show how happy and free spirited they are" scene. Which quickly morphed into" white women pretend singing into a hairbrush to show how fun loving and free spirited they are."

And then somehow we wound up with rapping grannies.

This move has a lot to answer for.

The Big Crap

What is to hate? I enjoyed it and still do.

Loved it.

Oh man, I can totally see Joan van Ark in that role.

It seemed so cool and profound when it came out (I was a teen) but even 10 years later I found a lot of it cringe-inducing, but I suppose it's still entertaining to a degree. Maybe they should rename it The Big Douche Chill.

G looks like an androgynous hair band member in that photo.

If you had to fuck one of them and had only the photo to make your decision ...?

Equal parts fun and pretentious.

I preferred Return of the Secaucus Seven.

Big Meg Tilly fan. Wish she hadn't retired at the peak of her career.

I agree Hurt was a hottie in this. Some good tunes. Not much else did anything for me.

Why did Mary Kay Place's character have to have sex with Kline's character? Didn't they have IVF back then?? It would have been less awkward. And how could the three of them remained friends after that---would Place bring the kid over to Kline and Glenn to babysit? Ouch.

R38 beat me by ten minutes.

And at least Secaucus Seven gave us David Straithairn dick.

One good line in the whole movie. William Hurt, watching an old late-night-black-and-white movie on TV, smoking a joint. "Sometimes you have to let art flow over you." I say this all the time.

I was a young teen when it came out and I loved it! It was aspirational to me to think about being somewhat stylish and successful and living in a huge house and having friends over, etc. So grown up. I didn't even understand half of the drug stuff and it took a few years to understand the bit about getting the Mary Kay Place character pregnant.

I bought the soundtrack and I still listen to it to this day. A killer soundtrack.

How apt that precisely when Glenn was partaking in pretentious overacting and gratuitous nudity in a glorified romcom, I was redefining the very meaning of screen acting in my first Oscar-winning Best Actress role (though, I'll admit, it was my second statuette overall). Some things never change, I suppose.

R44 is my soul brother.

My parents love it.

I was in grad school in Ann Arbor when the film was released. One of the theatres there treated it like Rocky Horror and showed it at midnight every Saturday for two years.

No one threw toast though.

Kevin Kline's character was likeable enough, but he was a bit pushy with his "only Motown music matters".

It made me cringe even then

Overrated

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I enjoyed the film. I was struck though about the way they moaned about how over-the-hill they were and how much of their lives were over. The characters could still all be alive today (and indeed aren't all the actors?), so I imagine what they would think NOW, looking back to the 1980s and remembering that they thought of themselves as "old" back then.

Boring and horrible

That husband of Karen's deserved better than being married to her cheating and manipulative ways.

The fashion and the hair makes them all look older than their actual age.

Jeff Goldblum's Michael character was much creepier than Hurt's.

Wasn’t that kind of the point of the movie, to the inteesting comment of R52, that they are so self obsessed they think their own aging is culturally significant, but of course it is not?

R56 yes, indeed, with his never ending supply of bikini manties and condoms, so fucking gross.

For the person who wanted to know why Mary Kay Place got to sleep with Kevin Kline rather than use IVF, it was payback for the husband because Glenn Close fucked the dead guy.

[quote] The Tilly girl came off as mentally challenged and it seemed Hurt was a creepy old man who was taking advantage of her.

That was supposed to be the happy ending to the movie. Seriously. Big Chill was a self-congratulatory baby boomer movie. Someone upthread said it was a glorified chick flick. Now, maybe it could be on the Lifetime channel.

I always thought those guys were hot...all of them. Remember William Hurt in Body Heat? That is a great movie.

You're so analytical, r43. I use that line myself.

I loved that Kevin Kline's shoe stores are named Running Dog .

Left me cold.

r62 = Kevin Costner

R43 I always thought it was "FART flow over you."

Being left cold and alone is probably your natural state though, R62.

Harmless fun.

I didn't care for it, but it wasn't aimed my demographic. The film pandered to the "nostalgic" yuppie (my parents generation I assume) - from the music of their youth to the "horrible problems" of easy money, entitled existence and bratty behavior. I first saw this movie around 2000 or so - and it did not hold up well from an empathy standpoint. Things changed a lot by the time we (born in the very late 1970's/very early 1980's) Gen Xers came of age as adults and not in a good way. The movie does serve as an interesting time capsule I guess.

You didn't 'get it' then, and I'm not surprised coming from you, R67.

What r38 said.

Obviously there is no "surprise" in my honest review.; no, I did not "get" The Big Chill. Every character seemed egomaniacal, vapidly saccharine and generally narcissistic. A quick summary of the movie is that a group of entitled, well-off yuppies hold a huge pot party to celebrate themselves and overly-hype and exaggerate the profound nature of the music of their youth. Did I miss something?

You missed the part where it wasn't any worse than Reality Bites or Singles or whatever film it was that you probably think is iconic.

Chinatown is iconic my friend.

.........The Big Chill is not.

The music was the best thing about it.

Is there any popular film that DL doesn't hate?

The Big Shit

Hmmm....Chinatown, The Godfather, Mildred Pierce, All About Eve, The Wizard of Oz, The French Connection, Terms of Endearment, etc......

The problems you list aren't unique to your parent's generation, R67.

....Cabaret, Heathers, E.T....

R78 - maybe or maybe not, but they are problems in this movie....which is what we are discussing here, right?

Tom Berenger was my favourite part of the film.

Kevin Costner's finest performance

Who knew this movie was so divisive?

That was the fashion of the time, R1.

"Big Chill was a self-congratulatory baby boomer movie."

Forrest Gump was a later and much more insufferable version of that.

I would agree with that, R85.

A millenial remake of this film is what would be insufferable.

R39 I agree about Meg Tilly

Like clockwork, we end up in a discussion about a film that has absolutely nothing to do with us, R87.

Bo Schembechler's appearance (via the TV) is the best thing about this movie.

HATED Karen. Fucking HATED her.

Jeff Goldblum had a very manly beard.

Yawnnnnnnn

R92 Jeff Goldblum looks like Shel Silverstein in that pic.

Kevin Klein looked hot in his little shorts. Nice VPL

I recall an interview a few years ago where Glenn Close said she was new to film... she told the director her character woukd not use the china pattern featured in the dinner scene....he told her to get over herself and she did concede she was kind of full of herself...

Re the china pattern thing....

Oooooof horrifying.

I just noticed Kevin Klein appears to be throwing a basket of apples into a bigger bowl of apples at 1:27 in the above video. Now why the fuck would they be serving apples with a dinner of spaghetti, salad and garlic bread? At first I thought they were rolls until I rewound a few times and saw the red one. Also Glenn Close is putting the leftover garlic bread in the foil so it can't be rolls.

Pretty much the archetypal "White People Problems" movie.

I can't even imagine a remake of this with Gen X or millennial actors. It was insufferable enough with Boomer actors.

R98, I hated that scene! It was so contrived, and it was a manipulative attempt to show how “cute” and “funny” the characters were. I remember rolling my eyes as I watched it.

At that age of their lives, most “Baby Boomers”, in the 1980s became uptight, insufferable, status conscious, money grubbing, puritanical Reaganites.

Same here R102. God awful.

[quote]because Glenn Close fucked the dead guy.

In a rare reversal of a cliché, art imitates life.

What were they at the time, mid-30s? Bitching about getting old. JFC. Most people today are just getting married and having kids in their mid-30s.

Campus radicals HATED football. They saw it as a violent, war-like pastime, encouraged by big donors, given money that should’ve gone to impoverished communities or as scholarships. Football back then was for beer swilling, flag waving, Vietnam War-supporting Archie Bunker types. The ex-radicals never would’ve tuned in for The Big Game. They never would’ve had a game of touch football at halftime because they wouldn’t even have known the rules of football. Hell, they wouldn’t have even had a football.

Funny thing, someone who was as working class as I was, who attended CUNY while working to pay our way through school & was a funky, downtown type who lived in Tribeca when Tribeca was scary, married a doctor and lived in NC in a house like that. She transmogrified overnight from funky chick in vintage clothes to a pearl necklace-wearing, hospital gala-attending doctor’s wife, a big fish in a small pond. My calls were no longer accepted.

What?

The big pill

It came out the year I graduated from high school. I saw it six times in the movie theater. I was 18. I am now 53. Kline, Hurt, and Place's performances stand up probably because their characters are filled out by the actors. Also they are the most likable. It has a great beginning and then drips with self-indulgent behavior for two hours. You know all you need to know from watching them in the credits. Not one black person in South Carolina? I think Close is so overrated- and this movie proves it. She doesn't act. Her emotions are all boring and trivial. I still don't understand how Kline and Place sleeping together works out in the end? I don't believe that Hurt's character is going to change. And poor Meg Tilly. Her character serves no real purpose except as a trade off between Nick and Alex.

PS: I have never seen another movie six times in the theater since. Twice is my limit.

The man sitting in the center (Thread photo) looks sneaky, creepy, and someone I would not trust. All that he is missing is dark sunglasses.

It's on TCM overnight tonight if you wish to set your DVRs.

I've always wanted to ride Tom Berenger's pole.

[QUOTE] Tom Berenger was HOT as fuck as the mustachioed, TV star.

Thanks- saved me the effort of asking which adult film star that was.

William Hurt's GF, who came with him to South Carolina for shooting, claimed they were married (common law) and sued him for money.

[quote] The divorce claim against actor William Hurt by his former lover goes to court Monday where she is asking for half of his earnings over the past 6 1/2 years even though she admits they were never formally married. Hurt, who married someone else in March, is estimated by the plantiff’s lawyer to be worth about $10 million. Sandra Jennings, 32, is basing her claim on four weeks that she lived with Hurt in Beaufort, S.C., while he was filming ″The Big Chill.″ South Carolina recognizes common-law marriages, while New York, where they lived most of the time, does not.

I really liked it at the time. I haven't seen it in decades so I don't know how well it holds up. Many films after the 40s and 50s don't.

They were only about a decade out of college and they all had AMAZING jobs, loads of money and big houses. God, that must've been a nice time to be alive.

There's a shot at the beginning at the funeral I always rewind. It's a filming error where you can tell the director yelled action and the extra then start to move.

Horrible self-absorbed baby boomer crap. Hate it.

"remembering that they thought of themselves as "old" back then."

As the movie was supposedly set 15 years post graduation, they would have been over 35 ("never trust anyone over 30"). Also their friend had just offed himself and they were at a funeral, so thoughts about mortality would have been natural.

They were obviously high achievers and the economy in the late 70s and 80s was pretty good so success at their age was not as unrealistic as it would be today

and for the the "concerned" pedo troll (they're always with us) Hurt's character would have been about 36 and Tilly is 9 years younger, so hardly diddliing little girls.

Didn't Kevin Kline's character tip the rest off that his shoe company was about to go public or be bought or something? It seems to me some insider trading was involved.

IMDB notes that, "The name of Harold Cooper (Kevin Kline)'s Running Dog shoe-store chain is a play on the Mao Tse-tung phrase, 'the running dogs of capitalism'".

She really had babies on her mind the whole time.

Phoebe Cates auditioned for the role that went to Meg Tilly. It's how she and Kevin Kline met.

(Obviously, he was a fan of FTARH.)

I think this group of people (Big Chill) would have been more successful than average, even considering the time period. Their lives were aspirational (successful and fame before 40, etc.). Tears in their beers for their lost idealism. boo-hoo.

R97 China patterns? She should have been concerned about that perm.

A modern remake of this iconic film would include Kylie Jenner, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Cardi B and Michael B. Jordan who all sit around and bemoan their terrible, unfair, tribulation-heavy lives. One broke a nail and another had a terrible break-up after a 2 month romance. One wasn't nominated for an Oscar and the other has yet to win a Grammy. Another landed on a "who wore it worst list" just last week - the horror! No one understands the profound pain that they live on a daily basis - and they are all getting OLD. To ease their suffering, they break out some Blue Dream, a bong and blast One Direction's "Up All Night" intermixed with Beyonce's "Lemonade". All is good with the world again! Heartwarming, right??????????????

I saw this movie back when it came out, and found it smug and creepy even then. We have every reason to hate baby boomers. I was in the lost generation that grew up right behind them, trying to scrape by on their sloppy seconds.

Years ago in NYC, they used to preview big studio movies one week ahead of time. They would show them with some other studio movie that wasn't making money. You had to pay and sit thru the first movie in order to watch the preview of the second. I was dying to see The Big Chill, so I was forced to sit through Rodney Dangerfield's Easy Money at a Times Square Theater.

Well wouldn't you know.... Easy Money was hilarious. I loved it. The Big Chill? Meh. Big Disappointment!

At least Hurt's character had a legitimate reason to be bitter.

One character would have to be gay or lesbian r126...or...wait for it...TRANS!!

They should do an updated version where the characters are from middle class & upper middle class homes, but they’ve been radicalized in their 30s by monumental student loan debt, are underemployed and working in Walmart & Amazon, the inability of their parents to afford medication or nursing home care, a lack of tax deductions, using Uber because they can’t afford car payments or insurance &their homes are being battered by climate change storms. . Call it The Big Hot Flash.

They were all still young and acted like they were so old and their lives were over.

I always thought it ridiculous that the Tom Berenger character was a huge celebrity. Because of course that's common college friends.

I loved it when it came out but it has not aged well. Place and Kline have the best performances although I do have affection for Goldblum.

Glenn Close and Hurt got raves then and now seem mannered.

Tom Berenger's character was a clear take off on Tom Selleck and the show Magnum P.I.; a big hit on TV at the time.

And one other thing: why were all of them so into Motown music and yet there wasn't ONE African American in the cast?

How about that tagline? "In a cold world you need your friends to keep you warm."

Felt totally out of touch when it came out but has aged nicely. To my surprise. Still hate the kitchen dance and the fact that everyone had to be hugely successful -- not a writer but a writer for a national magazine, not an out of work actor but a major TV star, not a shoe salesman but a huge CEO, etc. As fucking if.

And a housewife, r137, and a drug dealer, and a public defender going into the exciting world of real-estate law, and a small-town family practitioner. Kline was not a huge CEO, he had a chain of athletic-shoe stores that's about to go public; he wasn't Jeff Bezos or Jeff Immelt or Jamie Dimon.

He was living with a doctor wife and in a giant house so not exactly Kline's Shoes on Main Street. The public defender gave it up to be a rich real lawyer. And even the boring housewife gave up her (we assume would've been successful) based on all those around her) poetry career to be a mommy. I'm sorry, my college friends and I all did okay but we all weren't top of our fields either.

Oh and Hurt was the (sole?) Vietnam vet so he got a pass for his mess. Blame it on that awful war that all the others somehow avoided. (And don't say college deferment, wasn't Hurt in college with them?)

have never worked up the enthusiasm to see this.

all the stars are "meh"

It is impossible to care about white heterosexual malignant narcissists of either sex.