Well-wrought urn

The Big Chill

(1983)

Eighty-three was a transitional year for me, and like (the much better) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this nailed me in a vulnerable spot, and I stayed nailed for several viewings across several years until suddenly I just couldn't watch it anymore.

With this film it was nothing political; it was just that the machinery had become so obvious, the well-oiled cogs suddenly creaky.

But as with Butch, this had once held such a place in my heart that I thought it was time to give it another shot. And some moments still hold up--it's fine with me if I can't even hear "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" without wanting to do the dishes--but there are few lines of that dialogue that once seemed so perfect that ring true in any way save as Clever Movie Writing. Even the timing of lyrical cues in the (still wonderful) soundtrack, which once seemed so brilliant, now just strikes me as rote.

It is just too neat, too symmetrical (as it admits in so many words at the end): Tab A fits into Slot A, Tab B into Slot B, and all through the alphabet. What it needs is a little messiness; next time, I'll rent Return of the Secaucus 7.