Rating: 
Summary: Canyon is Solid Yarn
Review: Interesting commentary about life in contemporary LA involving about 7 or 8(I always forget) people whose lives all intersect. Film is quite moving and well written. It is rather episodic, but with this kind of storytelling it could not have been helped. I have to say that is one unique role for Steve Martin.
Rating: 
Summary: Dumb and Dumbest
Review: In one of the funniest and keenest film essays ever written, the New York Times last year named Grand Canyon the worst movie ever made. I just caught the flick on TV, and almost fell on the floor giggling at all the inanities. This one's so bad, it's even beyond a MAD magazine parody. Would give it 0 stars, but 1 is as low as [they] will allow me to go.
Rating:
Summary: As Bad As It Gets
Review: I'm with the bloke who equates this silly fulmination with the Celestine Prophecy. That's about as "deep" as it gets. Bloody awful.
Rating: 
Summary: Watch this Over and Over and Over and then Watch it Again
Review: I heartily agree with all the comments of the reviewers above who rated this flick positively. For me, it was NOT a movie about racism. It is a movie about synchronicity (see the book "The Celestine Prophecy") for a story about synchronicity. Things happen = happenstance, random, coincidence, serendipitous......Danny Glover's performance in this move was powerful! I really loved his character and all the scenes he is in. He takes care of his sister, niece and nephew while he chats on a deaf enabled telephone to his deaf daughter who lives in Washington D.C. Technologically, a precursor look at Instant Messaging circa 1990
that people who are deaf used with a phone and a modem. So, even though Simon is a tow truck driver, he uses this technology in his home to be a father to his daughter. He helps Mack, Kevin Kline's character and Mack and Simon develop a friendship. I found this a very realistic theme. I have had similar experiences. The actress who played Simon's sister was dynamite as she portrayed her sheer terror, panic and hysteria as her humble home is riddled with gang's automatic weapons bullets. Her performance is of academy award caliber as is Danny Glover's. Alfre Woodard who plays Jane, who becomes Simon's main "squeeze" is also a powerful, powerful performance in its simplicity. The scene of Jane and Simon on their first date is definite academy ward winning acting. Mary McDonnell as Claire, is a powerful character. All the characters are well developed and different and there is depth to their personalities. Patrick Malone as Otis, Simon's nephew who does not believe he can survive past age 25 is excellent.
Steve Martin as a movie producer who makes blood and guts movies
is a caricature and provides not so much comic relief as "cad" relief as he plays a louse. The scene of Steve Martin shot in the leg foaming at the mouth is horrible. Blood is a character in this movie. Blood being scrubbed off the sidewalk. Blood on a cutting board in the kitchen. Blood on the chest of an old man given CPR. Ambulances are a character throughout. There is an omnipresent police helicopter that is a device that separates the "chapters" or vignettes of the story. Architecture is interwoven as the beauty of the buildings and their patina in changing light is juxtaposed against the violence coming down around their beauty. Dream sequences of Kevin Kline and Mary McDonell are bizarre and realistic, the way many of our dreams are and shows how we try to work out the issues in our lives in our dreams. I found this to be a finely wrought, highly crafted film that I can watch repeatedly and never tire of. All the criticism of the film listed above and of the Kasdans as producers are pure idiocy. Those reviewers, I can only conclude, have not experienced the spiritual synchronicity depicted in the film and thus "can't relate" to it, don't see it as realistic. All of us are on spiritual journeys. Some of us are farther along than others. Kevin Cline's character meaningfully struggles with "creative meddling" that he does in other peoples' lives. I suspect many of us rarely introspect about the meddling or impact we have on others. As Mack says, we have to reach out to those who come into our lives and pull us back from the brink. This is truly a great film.
Rating:
Summary: Grand Calamity
Review: I know what the "Grand Disaster" critic means. This film's not "hollow" - it's just unwatchably "shallow". It's dumbed-down for readers of self-help books.
Rating:
Summary: Of course it's hollow!
Review: (...) This movie is as hollow as they come -- there's not a single second of honesty or real emotion (or, for that matter, committment) in its 120 superficial, self-indulgent minutes. Mr. Kasdan's faux progressive agenda reveals itself as reactionary. And, yes, those (...)are right on the mark in noting the film's latent, patronizing racism. It's rather sad (and even more revealing) that many white moviegoers refuse to see this.
Rating:
Summary: Grand Disaster
Review: First of all, the film isn't hollow as stated in a review below. That's just whiny ignorance from someone who refused to look beyond the front. That said, I'm not favoring the movie. It was a bleak, depressing movie that is practically unenjoyable to watch. It has a brilliant cast who all turn in wonderful performances, but it just doesn't work. Lawrence Kasdan is a brilliant man, but this movie is just not. Racist my heiney.
Rating:
Summary: Hallmark Card Mush
Review: What a poseur this Lawrence Kasdan! Grand Canyon plays with "violence" in what Kasdan must think is an intellectually seductive way. And though the film has no depth, it's done in a slow, heavy style that those prepared to like it can treat its puzzling aspects as oracular. Kasdan intends this as an ambiguous mystery play, a visionary warning. But it's hollow to the core, and, as previous reviews have noted, not-so-latently racist in an un-thought out, almost shocking, white liberal way.
Rating:
Summary: The Worst!
Review: I agree with the brother from Crenshaw. This ain't nothing but rich white boy patronizing. If I was white and saw this unprocessed kneejerk liberal bull, I'm be scared to death of black folks. Another example of how White Hollywood just do not EVER get it.
Rating:
Summary: Undeceptively terrible filmmaking
Review: I am an African-American male in my mid-30s who grew up in the Watts section of L.A. I can't believe some of this gushing over one of the dopiest, most self-important, most latently racist whitewashed confections in cinema history. This film MAY have been well-intentioned in a suburban, white liberal way, but the result is the exact opposite of what Kasdan intended: It makes you actually fear young inner-city African Americans, all of whom portrayed as murderous gangstas or crackheads. The only GOOD BLACKS are the ones who seek to assimilate into the white suburbs and befriend the condescending, angst-ridden whites who live there. Kevin Kline, the nominative white hero, can only feel good about himself after becoming pals with Danny Glover, the one GOOD BLACK male. The politics of this brooding white boy abomination are benignly immoral and positively disgusting.
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