‘Sometimes the shepherd needs the comfort of the sheep...’
I think we may have found it. The film with the most 90s cast ever. Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm brings together Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, Christina Ricci and even a fresh faced Katie Holmes in her cinematic debut. It could only be more 90s if it featured a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Sabrina the Teenage Witch…
Hmm. The plot. There isn’t much of one really. An ensemble cast featuring the aforementioned as well as Sigourney Weaver and Henry Czerny experiment with sexual freedom in suburban Connecticut in 1973. There is a lot of horniness. A lot of sexual repression. And a lot of Christina Ricci staring excitedly down the camera lens.
I can see what Ang Lee is going for here, an ethereal daydream about what goes on behind closed doors in the suburbs, but he ends up with a meandering, vaguely Lynchian period piece that features some great performances (most notably from Weaver and Ricci) without ever really matching the passion evoked by some of the film’s characters. While the era is lovingly restored and Lee is clearly a talented auteur, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that large parts of The Ice Storm are, well, pretty dull.
While it probably felt more radical upon release, this is a movie that I will probably never think about ever again. In a way, there can be no greater insult than that.