Review of The Ice Storm (1997) by Scott C — 02 Nov 2012

Guess what? When a film has no plot it doesn't turn out to be very good, does it? No, and this unending disappointment is the perfect example. I hate Kevin Kline so much I don't even want to discuss his lack of a performance.

Christina Ricci is almost as bad, though she does have at least one good line. The biggest problem I have with this unmitigated disaster is the fact that the most interesting part of the movie doesn't actually happen; Tobey Maguire's story ends when it begins.

Also, my advice for Ang Lee with regard to Elijah Wood's character: character development means that your character does stuff so that we are interested enough in that character such that we want to understand and ultimately sympathize with him/her, which means that all the other characters just talking about how weird another character is doesn't actually make that character weird.

He dies in a cool way, but before that he's little more than a ghost in a movie that plays up how strange he is without him actually doing anything strange. This does not make the movie interesting, it makes it dumb.

It's a good think Ang Lee went on to make Brokeback Mountain, which beats the shit out of this movie by a factor of everything plus everything times everything, forever.