Rating: 
Summary: Kindness and Courage vs. Cynicism and Fear
Review: First: This is a deceptively GREAT film. (. . .)P>Like all Kasdan films (good and bad) this film is, first of all, a visceral dynamo of sound and vision.. The thumping helicopters, oppressive and threatening, quite accurately depicting LA's mood at the height of the crime and crack era. Certainly there is that lush and epic feel that is Kasdan's chosen genre and signature matrix. Frankly some folks are clearly offended by his style and I believe that these critics are probably more comfortable with black and white indies, Mamet, and Woody Allen (who, incidentally, fits the self-inflated pretentious mold much more successfully than Kasdan). But there appears to be a pre-determined spite for the genre and also for any film attempting to deliver a non-cynical "message" that stains these reviews and focuses a sad, questioning light on the personal POV of the writer. I personally love all genres of film... so call me a movie whore. I may be a sentimentalist. Certainly Frank Capra captured my tears and soul many years ago. However, I loved the dark unhappy endings of the 70's, and the most obscure animations of the Balkan film studios. In my own life I have personally struck the gamut of postures, including that of a smug and cynical film buff. Cynicism says far more about the cynic than about the film. I believe that those who hate this film as yet clearly and sadly lack the ability or courage to see the underlying message. It is a simple and powerful and true one. There are 2 forces that ultimately define our lives and actions: Love and Fear. Fear houses chaos and hate. Intolerance, bigotry. Paralytic inaction and cynicism. Violence and dishonesty, and all those other, you know, "bad" things. It is simplest to follow your fear: you only need to say "NO" and you are done. You only need to destroy, and you are finished. Love heals, connects, enriches, energizes.... and requires you to act, again and again... to commit, to give, to build, to maintain and nurture, to create. To touch a stranger. That takes courage, and often a huge effort to break your pattern. The results are often mixed. It can only be prosper as a path, not a result. The message of the film was simple and profound. The epic execution was Kasdan's effort to grab your attention, to get you out of your everyday thinking, to drop all the distraction so that the simple message would be heard above your everyday din: Learn real Love. Then act on it, with each person with whom you come into direct contact. Hear them, then give something of yourself to their best part. That simple truth is at the heart of the great prophets... whether Jesus or Muhammed, Buddha or Ghandhi, King or Sadat, Mandela..... You change the world one step at a time... affecting each person you meet with each action you take, with each focusing attempt to listen. If you think this is pablum, then try to figure why so many of those who espoused it were tortured, killed or assassinated. If people weren't so isolated from what's happening around them, who knows.... who knows what tragic events in history might have been averted, or what great dreams may yet come to pass. But it only happens one touch at a time. Make the difficult and courageous choice every day. Be Kind, Respect, Forgive... and above all, learn to Love. Yep... this is a great film.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply Dreadful
Review: Well, the anti-intellectuals and fuzzy Seattle ur-thinkers have certainly coughed up a mouthful of valentines to this Lawrence Kasdan abomination. Yes, this is without doubt the most pretentious and outlandishly sententious film every made. No question. I've never been able to sit through this garbage in one sitting -- you have to sip it, like sacchrine-laced poison, a few minutes at a time. Unbelievably smug and dopey and facetious generalizations about a short, troubled period of American life in paradise-lost Los Angeles. The acting is almost uniformly awful, especially Steve Martin, who is terribly miscast and stuck in standard shtick. The criticism of previous reviewers is dead on.
Rating:
Summary: "I Reject Your Grand Canyon Headache"
Review: Well, the elitists and hopeful intellectuals have certainly coughed up a throatful of diatribes aimed at this Lawrence Kasdan creation. While I won't deny that is has some pretense and is too long, I can't help but return to it again and again (yes, it's one of my favorites - bullocks to you, elitists) for its crystal clear portrayal of a short, troubled period of American life in paradise-lost Los Angeles. The actors soar individually and as an ensemble. The editing is sublime. I understand Kasdan's morality play isn't for everyone, but to dismiss this film as one of the worst...please. I reject your headache. And by the way, I also found Mary McDonnell through this film, and what a worthwhile find she was. Hollywood has seriously underestimated and undervalued this wonderful actress.
Rating:
Summary: The Height of Pretension
Review: I can stress enough how overblown and puffily self-important this film is. I watched it -- well, I tried at least -- with my jaw on the floor. Staggeringly full of itself. How Hollywood ever poured money into this silly idea is, well, the story of Hollywood.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Pretentious Film in History
Review: Loved the long-overdue critical drubbing Grand Canyon received in last month's New York Times. Basically, the writers asserted that films that aspire to greatness - social forklifts, awkwardly ``elevating'' the human spirit - give bad films a bad name. Filmgoers can frequently tell, from the jackknifing trailers alone, when a movie - like Grand canyon - is going to stink like roadkill on the grille of a Greyhound. Bad films wear their ingredients the way soup labels do. To be really bad, a film should be pretentious and sententious. It should seek to change your life. (Anti-genius is one-percent perspiration, and 99 percent aspiration.) It should be, above all, entirely humorless.
The article offered a list of Avoidance Rules - a sort of moviegoers equivalent of the warnings issued by flight attendants before takeoff. Locate the exit nearest you, the writers said, before screening any film directed by big-name male actors or Brian DePalma, any film that features Robin Williams in a beard, any film scored by John Williams, any film starring Juliette Binoche or Kevin Costner, any film that features Robin Williams clean-shaven, any film directed by a woman and proud of it, any
film that features Robin Williams in a yarmulke and any film positively reviewed by anyone associated with National Public Radio. Not to mention: WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY LAWRENCE KASDAN.
``If a movie seems to be telling you, between every line, how great it is - if you just know, as you suffer through it, that the writers, or the actors, or the directors, really thought they were doing something great - that's generally the tipoff for me. Smug is the common thread. Movies and stars that scream, `Love me as much as I love myself.' Think `Yentl.''
Smugness, of course, is the sine qua non of Grand Canyon.
Rating:
Summary: Very Possibly The Worst Film Ever Made
Review: I live in East London and belong to a Worst Films club. Grand Canyon has won the worst film ever made prize the last 10 years running. Simply execrable. Two weeks ago I read a hilarious essay on Truly Bad Films in the Guardian. I'll excerpt the Grand canyon section for everyone's enjoyment: As director and screenwriter and former adman Lawrence Kasdan once said about "Grand Canyon", his aggressively sanctimonious 1991 meditation on privileged, angst-riddled, "self-actualizing" white folks in Los Angeles:
* "It's so hard to do one scene, you know. And all the people out there, all the civilians and all the critics who are civilians don't get it. They just don't get it. In fact, anyone who doesn't make art, it's very hard... No matter how sympathetic they are, they just don't get it. They don't get what we do."
* Mr. Kaufman does. The enfant terrible of Terrible gives his Bad Housekeeping seal of disapproval to the entire Kasdan canon. Four of Kasdan's films - "The Big Chill", "Wyatt Earp", "Silverado" and Kaufman's unfavorite, the portentiously pretentious "Grand Canyon" - make his Bottom 10 list.
* The beauty of "Grand Canyon" is not its grandeur, but its pander. L.A. is depicted as a city of traffic jams, random violence and spiritual unease over which police choppers hover without end.
* Kasdan's film is ostensibly about the abyss - a sort of (drum roll, please...) Grand Canyon, if you will - that separates blacks and whites, rich and poor. The Chicago Sun Times panted: "In a time when our cities are wounded, movies like "Grand Canyon" can help to heal."
* The dialogue seems transcribed from the notes of a "Donahue!"-era encounter group ("I reject your headache!"). Women rabbit on about having babies and bedding men, while men reflect on life, death, the universe and tie-ups on the 405.
* Walking to his car after a Lakers game, a jaded producer of splatter films (Steve Martin) observes, without the slightest trace of irony: "Everybody in this parking lot is trying to control their fear." And: "We live in chaos - it's the central issue in everyone's life."
* "Grand Canyon" has more Biblical citations than a New York Knicks huddle, with epiphanies, vague cosmic notions of "miracles" and contemporary equivalents for Joseph, the Wise Men, Mary Magdalene and Lot's Wife. There's even a Mary figure with Empty Manger Syndrome who, out jogging, finds an abandoned infant in the bullrushes (or something).
* God only knows what Kasdan intended, for in this film they are one and the same. Like Mr. Anderson's amphibian downpour in "Magnolia", Kasdan's Red Sea finale plays like a heavy-handed "Torah! Torah! Torah!"
* The Passion Players join hearts and hands at the edge of the... Grand Canyon, and stare slack-jawed into the yawning void. (So, alas, does the audience.)
Rating:
Summary: This Film Has At Least One Character You Can Identify With
Review: This film is a modern masterpiece of cinema. I saw it at the theatre when it was released and was blown away by it's scope, realism, and emotion. The fact that it didn't rake in money at the box office only says that it was too good for audiences who would rather waste their money on mindless entertainment such as "Scary Movie" or "American Pie", etc. I was 17 when I viewed this classic and was touched and moved and glad I'd spent my money on such a meaningful film.
The acting is first rate, as well as the sound, editing, and visuals. The story is about people and the choices we make and, finally that after all is said and done, in the scope of things, we're really just grains of sand in a larger picture. That it is so important to cherish what we have, those who we love and who love us, friends and family, and to do the best we can and treat others better.
I could go on and on about this movie, but all I really need to say is I highly recommend it and it should be viewed with all your attention, quiet(no talking), and an open mind.
Rating:
Summary: Grand Canyon
Review: Grand Canyon is simply a movie that shows how connected every person is to another. No matter your "state of fortune" or perception of the world, the movie shows how each and every other type of person will eventually cross your path. It states, "You are the most important person to some, and inconsequential to others". I see the movie three ways depending on which characters you follow. The first way: It makes you believe that no matter what you accomplish, complete or create it pails in the eyes of nature. That at the end of the day it was all for nothing so don't take it all so seriously. The second way: You can make a difference. It shows that a single decision on a given day can change the course of your life. That you should follow through with your convictions no matter the resistance you face. That at the end of the day your decisions shape the landscape and make the world a better place. The final way: (And the way I see it most) You are supposed to stay the course. That everything that happens, happens. React to, enjoy or escape the situation you encounter but no matter what you decide you are actually part of a bigger world. That you need to take time to enjoy the accomplishments of others, nature and yourself. No matter how far you are from other people they are never out of view. In a moment you can bring together or be seperated from everything you have ever known. And at the end of the day you will have created your "Grand Canyon".
Rating:
Summary: Six Degrees of Seperation
Review: There are few films that truley reflect society that we live in. While Hollywood often adds the typical stuff to movies that make us laugh, cry, and love, this movie has it all but without the Hollywood hype. The all-star cast is incredible! While it was not a huge box office success, it should have been and is on my list of one of the best, most forgetten movies of all time. The acting is superb, the script involving, and the story line realistic. It doesn't pull any punches and shows us how everyones life, regardless of who you are, where you live, or what you do, is someone intertwined in the fabric that we call America. This movie will have you feeling good about living in the United States regardless of the horrible situations that we currently live in.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow, what a film
Review: It is so easy in this epic epoch to upset and depress and generally get us all worked up about what a truly terrible world we live in, and it is just so much harder to show what a wonderful life this is, the freedom and greatness that we have been granted, the love that is available and the power that we actually have to change our own and other peoples lives. This film does that, and though slick and sentimental it is a beautiful and profound piece, and you'll be glad to watch it, and glad to share it.
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