The Ice Storm | Kevin Kline, Joan Allen

The Ice Storm | Kevin Kline, Joan Allen | Well done Criterion

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The Ice Storm

	The Ice Storm Kevin Kline, Joan Allen 20th Century Fox, 2001 average customer review:based on 140 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

When a self-centered husband's relationship with his wife and mistress grow cold, it takes a wife-swapping "key party" and a freak ice storm to clear the air and change their lives forever. Director Ang Lee offers a compelling look at a controversial era.

Behind closed doors

Two neighboring families experience a long and ultimately life-changing Thanksgiving weekend. The story moves from one house to the other where the adults are all bored with their spouses (but not with their neighbor's spouse) and the kids are restless and curious about sex. Everyone feels misunderstood and a big ice storm is coming.

This adult drama is full of outstanding performances: Kevin Kline and a luminously lovely Joan Allen play husband and wife who are both filled with pain and longing. Sigourney Weaver is great as the self-absorbed and callous neighbor wife who hooks up with Kline's character. The kids include a young, sensitive Tobey Maguire who lusts after classmate Katie Holmes, while younger siblings Christina Ricci and Elijah Woods suffer the pangs of adolescence. It's played very low-key with no sentimentality to show what self-indulgent and disconnected lives they lead. They're all miserable and the warnings about the coming ice storm intensify the feeling of impending doom.

This sobering look at middle-class woes is definitely not a feel-good movie, but it's very well-made. Recommended.

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Well done Criterion

The transfer is excellent, the extras are incredible, I especially liked the commentary track which made me appreciate this film even more. Well worth buying. Also, this is one of the rare occasions when a film based on a novel is actually better than the novel itself. While Rick Moody's The Ice Storm is an ok book, Ang Lee's The Ice Storm is a classic movie!

Lesser known actors in this.

They mention Tobey Maguire, Spiderman, who is the narrater but there is also Christina Ricci who is very sexually active in this gets to at least second base a couple times and uses the line, "You show me yours and I'll show you mine" which back fires on her. She also does many things with Elijah Wood. He is caught by her father, who is having an affair with Elijah's movie mom. Elijah being on top of Christina, without nudity. Christina goes to bed with Elijah's brother, whom she wanted all along. During the Ice Storm someone I mentioned dies, very sad. Tobey was about 15 or 16, Christina I would guess about 13, and the same for Elijah. The boy that played Elijah's brother was someone I had never heard of before Adam Hahn (or Hann) Byrd who looks about 12 or 13 and the character is played with a mental age of about 9 or 10.

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A tale of two families

Thanksgiving 1973, the Hoods and the Carvers live next door to each other in suburban New Canaan, Connecticut. The Watergate scandal is reaching its height, and the country is experiencing its own breakdown via open marriages, teen sexual experimentation and drugs. As the weather gets colder, the action among the characters heats up near to the boiling point.

Elena Hood (Joan Allen) is shoplifting cosmetics in the local pharmacy while her husband Ben (Kevin Kline) is having an affair with Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver). Poor Ben, in some ways, all he may need to do is have someone to talk to, but when he opens up afterward to Janey, she says:

"Ben, you're boring me. I have a husband. I don't have a need for another one."

Despite his own philanderings, Ben can barely talk to his sixteen year old son Paul about self abuse. "If you have any questions, we can look it up." Or, his daughter Wendy (Ricci) about making out with the boy next door.

"Sometimes the shepherd needs the company of the sheep," Rev. Phillips (Michael Cumpsty) answers Elena when she encounters him at a key party.

This film is much more than just a tell-all sexy account of a bygone era. "The Ice Storm" is not that kind of an easy watch. It's a bitter coming of age tale for both generations.

Rebecca Kyle, June 2008

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Great cinematography and music, mediocre plot.

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

The Ice Storm directed by Ang Lee is a film about two families in Connecticut during the Thanksgiving weekend of 1973 It is based on the novel by Rick Moody. The film featured several child actors who later became stars notably Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes. It is a controversial film due to it's plot regarding the sexual revolution, wife swapping and it's depiction of teen sexuality. I will not go into the details as people can read about much of it on the parent's guide feature on IMDB

The film did poorly at the box office but became a hit when released on home video.

The film follows the Hood family and the Carver family. The Hoods have a son and daughter and the Carvers have two sons. The film deals with the interaction between the two families and the parents who are distant from their children. One could almost say the parents emotionally neglect their children in the film. The film has valuable lessons about parenting.

I found the sex themed plot to be too much but this was compensated by the film's cinematography and excellent musical score making use of both Indonesian Gamelan music and a Native American flute music.

The special features are also good and more comprehensive that what was on ealier DVD releases of the film.

Disc one contains a theatrical trailer and audio commentary by director Ang Lee and writer James Schamus.

Disc two contains new interviews with some of the film's actors Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver, and Elijah Wood, a new interview with Rick Moody who wrote the novel the film is based on, scenes from an honors ceremony for Ang Lee and James Schamus which describes many of Ang Lee's films, video essays about the film's cinematograpy, and production and costume design, and finally several deleted scenes.

This is an OK film that I would have liked more if not for the sexual plot elements.

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