Review: Grand Canyon

A bunch of often barely connected characters lament the crime-ridden, frightening, and seemingly hopeless state of society in modern L.A., whilst undergoing potentially life-changing events. Kevin Kline is an immigration lawyer whose car breaks down in the last place in L.A. you want that to happen. The appearance of African-American tow-truck driver Danny Glover saves him from being another victim of gangland thugs, and Kline spends much of the rest of the film trying to come to terms with this stranger having saved him from a possible horrible fate. Meanwhile, he’s having an affair with his secretary, a very lonely and unfulfilled Mary-Louise Parker. Kline’s wife Mary McDonnell is failing to make sense of the violent times she’s living in, and also struggling to deal with the fact that her teen son (Jeremy Sisto) is going away to summer camp, and eventually will fly the coop indefinitely. A chance discovery of an abandoned, crying baby in some bushes appears to fill some of the void, though she rationalises it as more having a duty to take care of an abandoned child than anything else. Steve Martin is a cynical producer of ultra-violent films, whose up close and personal experience with real violence has him considering a change of heart and career. Glover (who is missing his deaf daughter, who doesn’t live near him), for his part, is struggling to get through to his nephew (Patrick Malone), who is becoming increasingly involved in street gangs, much to the anguish of his mother (Tina Lifford). Alfre Woodard plays a friend of Parker’s whom Kline arranges a blind date with widowed Glover.

Although it also stands as a forerunner to multi-character societal dramas like “Crash” and “Magnolia”, this 1991 film from Lawrence Kasdan (“The Big Chill”) actually had me thinking of “Do the Right Thing” and “Boyz ‘N the Hood” instead. In fact, watching this interesting, but foolish and dated film, I couldn’t help but wonder what Spike Lee and John Singleton might’ve made of this midlife crisis film masquerading as an urban uneasiness social commentary. My guess (and it’s without any knowledge whatsoever) is that they deride it for focussing on the wrong side of the fence. I mean, who wants to see a film about white yuppies complaining about how their lives are empty and that urban (i.e. Ethnic, in this film’s worldview) gangs are turning everything to shit. I’m not suggesting that Kasdan and his co-writer/wife Meg are telling any falsehoods here (though Martin’s movie producer who momentarily sees the light is a tired and half-arsed point to be making), nor that the film is dull, though it’s not especially good either. Indeed, the acting is far too good for it to be unwatchable, with particularly fine work by Danny Glover, Kevin Kline, and a mostly serious Steve Martin. Hell, even the usually annoying Mary McDonnell and a surprisingly hot Mary-Louise Parker do some of their best work. It’s just that the film’s POV (which Kasdan has every right to have, no matter what) is an awfully hard sell, especially given the time in which the film was released. Hell, it also brings up bad memories of “Bonfire of the Vanities”, which started with a scene involving white yuppies having car trouble in a predominantly African-American, crime-ridden neighbourhood. That film, awful as it was (and it sure was!), at least attempted a humorous take on the situation, no such luck with Kasdan. He genuinely seems to think he’s onto something profound here about the need for connection, and he just isn’t. I mean, the real story is in the gang violence, but that’s a subplot here in a film where a mother attempting to compensate for the impending departure of her teen son (and a stagnant marriage) by taking someone else’s baby as a surrogate is seen as the bigger deal. Oh, I’m sooo sad because my son is away at summer camp and soon he’ll be away for good...I’m sooo depressed. Yeah, whatever, yuppie (The characters are probably more upper-middle class, with Glover closer to working class, but Martin’s character is surely fairly affluent before his injury). Try living a life that every day seems like it could be ended by gunshots.

Things become especially absurd (and vaguely offensive) when McDonnell’s decision to adopt the baby comes out of the possibly imagined ramblings of a homeless person McDonnell jogs past one morning. I’m not effing kidding, folks. In Kasdan’s world, hobos dispense sage advice to the affluent! And don’t even get me started on the so-called office affair between Kline and Parker. It’s so horribly and cowardly handled by Kasdan that there is only ever one discretion and it occurs before the film even begins, so as not to make Kline out to be a selfish bastard. A tacked-on happy ending for the Parker character is just that, tacked-on. It’s handled with such a complete lack of balls (maybe Mrs. Kasdan wrote it?) that it ends up being practically superfluous, despite Kline’s fine effort (Even when playing a scoundrel, Kline is always likeable to some extent). The Mary McDonnell character, meanwhile, is written in such a way that makes her frankly self-absorbed and, on-paper unlikeable, despite McDonnell actually giving a very likeable performance. I could also suggest the subplot involving Martin’s character transformation ends up rather pointless, but I’ll give Kasdan the benefit of the doubt there, because it was always obvious that Martin was a somewhat soulless, cynical character unlikely to ever truly change. I will give Kasdan credit, though, for the scene where Kline sets up Glover on a blind date with Parker’s co-worker Woodard, whom he doesn’t actually know. Parker and Woodard exchange rather amused looks, and then in a scene later on, Woodard and Glover remark that Kline set this up probably because they’re the only two black people he knows. At least Kasdan’s honest enough to be critical (albeit gently) of Kline’s rather silly, if well-meaning presumption (‘Hey, you two are black and single, I bet you’d like each other!’). I’m not going to suggest that Kasdan only knows two black people, but I have to admit that I’m chuckling at the possible irony nonetheless. I also should point out that it’s the only moment of dialogue in the entire film that felt natural and organic. Everything else that the characters say in this film is all too clearly the words of the screenwriters, and not said in any organic way possible. Even the gangbangers are amateur philosophers for cryin’ out loud and it begins to feel like the characters have no real flesh and blood to them.

Meanwhile, there’s so much going on in this film that it feels over-stuffed and frankly a little too hyperbolic- traffic chaos, earthquakes (at least “Magnolia” saved the apocalypse for the end), heart attacks, violent car-jackings, even more violent drive-by’s, marital infidelity, missing babies, and a last-minute trip to the Grand Canyon. It’s too much, like Kasdan had put all this stuff in one film to make it somehow all seem more important than it really is.

Look, this is Kasdan’s POV, and it’s not like he can really tell it from an African-American POV with absolute certainty and insight, if this is really his POV. In fact, the character played by Danny Glover, comes off as one of the most interesting in the entire film, it’s only in his dealings with Kline that things feel pat, contrived, and a little out of Kasdan’s depth. Kasdan actually makes a few decent points here and there, including a memorable visit to Tina Lifford from an insurance salesman, and a line from Malone about his mortality that is equally disheartening (Although this whole subplot with Glover’s nephew and sister feels like it belongs in its own, far more fleshed-out film. The title “Boyz ‘N the Hood” springs to mind for some reason...not sure why). But with all the films that dealt with modern life and race relations, etc. in the late 80s and early 90s, this one has become pretty much obsolete. Just ‘coz yuppies probably have a thing or two to say about gang violence and modern society too, doesn’t mean we get any benefit or enlightenment from a film about it. Pretentious dialogue doesn’t help, but the performances are worthy. Terrible ending, trying for happiness and tidiness where there isn’t really any call for it, with Kline in particular getting off way to easy.

Rating: C+