The Big Chill (1983)
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Seven old college friends gather for a weekend reunion after the funeral of one of their own.
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What critics compared The Big Chill to
This is their The Big Chill.
Co-written by Sandler with Fred Wolf (“Joe Dirt”), “Grown Ups” is a cliched variation on “The Big Chill” with a quintent of friends from childhood reuniting after the death of the coach who long ago guided them to a basketball championship.
Whether it’s the drama of “That Championship Season” or the sardonic humor of “The Big Chill,” this is a pretty sturdy plot.
If you’ve ever wondered what “The Big Chill’’ would be like with old “Saturday Night Live’’ castmates — well, why would you ever have done that?
Imagine if " The Big Chill " were made today.
Reminiscent of "The Big Chill" and "The Great Outdoors," only less wise than the former, less clever than the latter, and more juvenile than both combined, the picture goes about its laid-back way without working up a sweat.
Like the other two movies, which paid homage to a specific genre (zombie and Hollywood action movies), The World’s End is a lot more than a Brit take on The Big Chill, although to reveal the craziness that erupts halfway through the movie would spoil the fun.
Even as it draws on obvious inspirations like The Big Chill and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, it’s a fresh, personal statement from director/co-writer Edgar Wright and star/co-writer Simon Pegg.
Apart from a few funny lines (and a brilliant Madchester soundtrack) the movie is a total failure as a beery “The Big Chill.”
With “the World’s End,” Wright has stated that he watched “The Big Chill” and “It’s Always Fair Weather” in order to get in the mood for a reunion films.
It's kind of like The Big Chill, but without the heavy-handedness.
One minute it’s The Big Chill ; the next it’s Children of the Damned .
This conception isn’t entirely wrong, of course, but it belies the fact that the oldest members of the cohort are hurtling toward something which looks an awful lot like middle age; I recently realized, with no small amount of horror, that I am now older than most of the characters in The Big Chill.
Julie’s restlessness makes her a love/hate fascination; the film may speak to millennials much like “The Big Chill” did to boomers and “Reality Bites” to Gen-Xers.
The Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) was penned by Lawrence Kasdan ( The Big Chill) whose unavailability for the sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) led Lucas back to Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (who'd written American Graffiti for him).
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The Return of the Secaucus Seven had two separate New York runs, made appearances on several year-end lists, and became a cause célèbre for snobs "in the know" deriding Kasdan's The Big Chill as a Secaucus rip-off.
ORDINARY PEOPLE, THE BIG CHILL, and GHOST were just three films that were studies of characters searching for answers to their grieving…
…and its wretched rip-off The Big Chill (1983)…
Jay is cozy with Big Chill nostalgia at the funeral for the director who discovered him…
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Personally, I would say it’s a bit like Beth’s Special-K blend: “The Big Chill” meets “This Is the End,” with a dark thread of Luis Buñuel’s “Exterminating Angel” running underneath.
Coherence is firmly anchored by a talented ensemble with a lot of chemistry who give uniformly top-notch performances, providing the film with a modest Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Big Chill type of energy.
Lawrence Kasdan, the filmmaker whose credits include the superb efforts The Big Chill and The Accidental Tourist, wrote the script for The Bodyguard back in 1975, during his off-hours from his job as an advertising copywriter.
Costner, who was probably more alive as the corpse in "The Big Chill" than he is here, learned about the script when he and Kasdan were making "Silverado," and for whatever reason decided not just to produce it with Kasdan and Jim Wilson, but to play a role that was originally intended for Steve McQueen.
Lawrence Kasdan wrote the movie in the early Seventies as a first-ever script that took a while to find a home; meanwhile, he went on to write a few other things you might know, like "The Empire Strikes Back," "Return of the Jedi," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Body Heat," "The Big Chill," "Silverado," "The Accidental Tourist," "Grand Canyon," and a couple of yawners, "Wyatt Earp" and "Dreamcatcher."