Return of the Secaucus Seven

Well before "The Big Chill" came along, John Sayles made this terrific low-budget film. If you are looking for slick-filmmaking go elsewhere. If you want something that is different, and for me far more believable, than most Hollywood films try this one.

Shocked that there's only three pages of comments for the film widely considered to be one of the fathers of the modern indie film movement. John Saylees used his b-movie money from Roger Corman (the best scripts written for him) and financed this weekend home movie that became a hit and launched Sayle's film career.

Some of the bad reviews are really unfounded. This has some of the best dialog in American film, and though the performances are not all polished, it adds to the reality. There's a sense of genuine community not like the Hollywoodized "Big Chill."

If you stick with the film you'll be rewarded by many nifty scenes and conversations. Gordon Clapp is fun and there are beautifully observed moments of wit and drama. Mark Arnett is particularly good and the moment he recites his litany of protest arrests is great. The film-making is raw, but that's not the point.

However, the DVD version is actually missing a scene on the VHS of the hamburgers being grilled to some sort of rhythmic montage. Why?

Anyway, if you're a fan of great dialog, political commitment, and what can be done for 40 grand and terrific writing, check this classic out.

This is what good moviemaking is about. If you are looking for million-dollar cost overruns, over-rated movie stars, the same crop of (yawn) "special" effects and trite action-movie plots and dialog, look elsewhere. This is young John Sayles doing his absolute best with limited resources. The characters are realistic, the dialog brilliant yet believable and the script does an excellent job of handling the subject of not only growing up, but growing older with a bittersweet sense of humor.

For years I heard this film described as The Big Chill only three years earlier. A pretty accurate description. The plot and characters are similar, but Return of the Secaucus 7 has more layers, and provides more random "slice of life" scenes. Whilst watching this film, you can't help the feeling you know these people, or someone like them. Sayles manages to prove that real life situations can be interesting, funny and touching; unexpected moments can start a chain of life-altering events.

The New Hampshire scenery is beautiful – nice to see something shot anywhere other than NYC or a Hollywood back lot. A testament to friendship, fun and low-budget filmmaking.

Sayles' first film is, as one previously reviewer noted, the prototype independent film: small budget, previously unknown actors, an emphasis upon talk and ideas over action or even an event-oriented plot. The script varies from slow at times to very entertaining and incisive at others, but it always feels real. You don't necessarily feel you know the characters all that well when it's over, but you care about them nonetheless. It's all in all a very worthwhile film, in which you can see the director learning how to handle an ensemble cast, as he has done so effectively in recent years in Lone Star and Sunshine State. If you like this type of film at all, you will find it rewarding and quite worth your time.

It is amazing, though, how so many of the reviews attempt to not merely acknowledge the similarities to The Big Chill, but to elevate one film and denigrate the other. They come from very different places in terms of budget, stars and polish, but are both very fine films. In one sense, TBC is deeper in that the characters in that film have varied from their previous ideals (or at least it seems that way), a fact that lends a melancholy beneath the slickness that really isn't there in S7. However, a lot of people reach the age of the characters in S7 (they are all only about 30, younger than the characters in Chill) without yet having to really put things in perspective. The leads in S7 have become teachers, a predictable outcome. One other character has taken a job as an aide to a senator. J.T. is pursuing (or putting off pursuing) a musical career. The fact that this film views the characters before some of the inevitable conflicts in their lives have ripened actually makes it more subtle, and allows for the viewer to wonder where they will be in 5-10 years. Will the leads become Kevin Kline and Glenn Close? Will one of the characters die young and precipitate the life-examining session that occurs in Chill? I think the two films dovetail nicely together. To exalt one at the expense of the other is unnecessary and needlessly cynical.

Some of the comments about "Return" are amazingly vitriolic and appear to have been written by people who hate independent films in general, or who hate "reunion" movies, or who hate low-budget movies, etc., etc., etc. If your comfort zone is Hollywood films with predictable plots and pretty, more or less interchangeable faces you've seen over and over, why watch this film at all?

There are also some misstatements of fact among the comments--it is amazing that someone thinks that "The Big Chill," a blatant piece of Hollywood plagiarism, preceded and inspired this film--but particularly off base is the remark that few of the actors in the film have many additional credits. Yes, there are several actors with only one to three credits. But more than half of them have numerous credits, some as many as 90, and some as writers and producers as well as actors. Furthermore, many of the credits are excellent--most of the TV credits, for example, are for series that are critically acclaimed. In addition, four or five of the actors are well known and respected in the business, whether they are household names or not. If you can use IMDb well enough to make comments, you can also check the accuracy of such statements before making them.

The film may not seem gripping now, since the reunion thing has been done to death. But it is a very important movie, in terms of advancing the popular acceptance of independent films and, of course, launching John Sayles' brilliant career, one which has contributed in a major way to the culture of this country and indeed the world. And it is still good watching for those who do not expect all films to be about action.