Too much of everything

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

After about 30 years of reading and hearing of this film, I finally watched this directorial debut of John Sayles on DVD that I borrowed from a local library. A reunion of several college buddies from something they were arrested for when they were demonstrating on some issue, we witness how some are broken up, some are trying to make something of themselves, and some are now settling with a family. Sayles' dialogue makes many pertinent points of life and how things don't always go in directions that satisfy our ideals or dreams though one keeps trying to enjoy things while they still can. There's also some fine humorous exchanges of whatever they're going through that abound. Nothing more to say except that I highly recommend Return of the Secaucus Seven. Oh, and I also recommend Sayles' commentary track I listened to afterwards.

Okay, I watched this just now, many, many years after seeing The Big Chill. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe I've seen too many other good movies by Sayles. I have to say I think this movie is seriously overrated.I understand why people would prefer this over TBC. The script is not bad, the camera work is not bad, the editing is not bad. A lot of the dialog is smart. Unfortunately, when the dialog isn't smart, it's downright smarmy, completely off the mark. But what makes this a truly inferior movie is the ACTING! Jon Lovitz's "It's ACTING!" came to mind no more than ten minutes into this movie. I couldn't get past the atrocious delivery, intonation, pacing, and fake emotion of just about every actor in this movie. Just really, really bad. There's no way to soft pedal. Even the (now) reliable David Strathairn will make you wince. I couldn't help thinking that this is one movie Sayles could remake and greatly improve upon just by using good, professional actors.So, if you're like me, someone who actually thinks TBC is a good movie, and you've heard The Return of the Secaucus 7 praised as infinitely superior . . . lower your expectations. Perhaps you won't be quite so put off like I was.

The first time I saw this movie was at a John Sayles movie festival. He's so interesting that I always give his movies a look, even if I don't always find them without flaws. I had been hearing so much about this one that I was really looking forward to it. Well, I was so bored that I ended up sleeping through almost all of it. But it was on IFC the other night, and even though it was on at 3AM, I managed to stay awake through it all, and I can see its merits. It IS talky, like what happens when a stageplay hits the movies, but as I found out, it IS worth a second look. And I never did really like "The Big Chill"--there always seemed something phony about it.

I wish I could put my finger on exactly what it is about films like this that I loathe so much. Return of the Secaucus 7, The Big Chill, Rules of the Game, Gosford Park, The Anniversary Party. One after another, these long winded ensemble reunion/get-together films both bore and enrage me with their awful scripts and even worse acting.Return of the Secaucus 7 is perhaps the best (or worst) example of a genre of film-making that's arguably destined to fail as soon as the opening credits end. It's just an awful, boring script and it's no wonder that very few of the "actors" went on to any kind of a career in film. These people memorized their lines and started filming. There is no passion or emotion in any of the dialogue. I was reminded over and over again of the sequence of scenes in Reservoir Dogs where Tim Roth is urged to memorize, and then make his own, an anecdote about a drug deal. His mentoring police officer tells him that it's not enough to just memorize the story. He has to know all the little details. He has to make the story utterly believable. And as the sequences unfold and he practices telling the story over and over, he is able to do just that. In Secaucus, ALL of the actors read their lines as if they've just committed them to memory. It always seems as though during the conversations in this film, the person not talking is ready to speak their next line before the other person is done speaking theirs. It's an indictment on not only the actors, but on the director.The Secaucus 7 are a group of seven friends who were wrongfully busted and detained on their way to a protest rally of the Vietnam War. This film is a reunion of the 7 (plus a few others) about 10 years later. Nothing too dramatic or exciting, and certainly not anything that most rational people would feel the need to reunite and reminisce for. All of this is revealed in synopsises you may read, and with about 10 minutes left in the film. So we watch these characters reunite for an hour and a half, but don't have any real basis as to what they have in common. At least in all of the aforementioned films above, there is a reason for the gathering of people. This is not a particularly believable reunion.The formula for these reunion ensembles seems to be as follows: Take a large group of pretentious dysfunctional mostly unlikeable middle aged adults with emotional and relationship problems and make them talk to each other about them for two hours. With a bad script. Oh, yeah. I can see why people like them.