Grand Canyon

Starring: Kevin Kline

Directed by: Paul Landres

RS: Not Rated

1950 Drama

Mack (Kevin Kline), an L.A. lawyer, takes a shortcut home from a Lakers game and nearly gets blown away by hoods; Simon (Danny Glover), a tow-truck driver who rescues Mack, despairs that his sister and her two kids live in a gang war zone; Claire (Mary McDonnell), Mack's wife, finds an abandoned baby girl and wants to adopt her to fill the void left by a son who's growing up and a husband who's screwing his secretary (Mary-Louise Parker); Davis (Steve Martin), Mack's friend who produces violent movies, pisses himself and pukes when a mugger shoots him in the leg for his Rolex.

To his credit, director Lawrence Kasdan makes his new movie impossible to pigeonhole. Grand Canyon is less slick and infinitely more ambitious than his own Big Chill. The script -- by the director and his wife, Meg Kasdan -- encompasses crime, racism, homelessness, an earthquake, Felliniesque dreams and problems ranging from making a left turn in L.A. to finding the meaning of life. Some of this is indigestible. It's a tossup as to which is harder to take -- a street prophet advising Claire to "keep the baby" or Claire's sanctimonious yuppie angst. Then there are shots of a police chopper that draw unfortunate comparisons to John Singleton's much grittier and truer Boyz n the Hood.

It helps that the actors are splendid. Glover exudes strength and charm; his romance with Jane (the marvelous Alfre Woodard) has an unforced urgency. And Martin is potently funny. Veering from religious conversion (words like "doth" creep into his conversation) to a fierce defense of splatter films, he's a bracing deflator of hypocrisy. Grand Canyon is most gripping when Kasdan shows people waking up to the world and finding that they need more than bromides -- the kind doled out in The Prince of Tides -- to deal with the chaos of urban life.

PETER TRAVERS
RS 622