Return of the Secaucus Seven

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.

John Sayles first film and it shows, but despite this a great film about old friends reuniting and having a good time. Great characters just being themselves in front of the camera and it is very beautiful. Don't expect action or even much plot out of this film but if you can get past the fact this is not your same old generic Hollywood film you will like this one.

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.

Overshadowed by its loud, shallow and uncredited remake (The Big Chill) Sayles' first film is a very slight effort that manages to capture a time and place with quiet brilliance. The actors -- first roles for most of them and only roles for some -- are sometimes painfully amateurish and the duration and self-indulgence of some of the scenes make the viewer long for chainsaw intervention, but the film as a whole does a wonderful job of showing a generation of aging idealists on the eve of Reagan's America. Unlike The Big Chill, where everyone is pretty and successful and the dialogue is crisp and full of what passes for wit on prime time TV, Sayles' characters are almost too low-key, their banter sometimes clumsy and their jokes not terribly funny. The unfortunate side effect of his conscientious effort to keep things "real" is that the film sometimes fails to entertain or engage and most of the characters end up outside the viewers' sphere of caring, like someone else's friends in a third-hand story. Still, a very impressive first film and influential on many other 80s movies besides its gaudy imitator.

Return of the Secaucus Seven begins with a shot of a man doing a half hearted job of plunging a filthy toilet, and goes down hill from there. Only desperately insecure ex-hippies or their sycophants could praise this very poorly made and unimaginative work. Nothing against writer/director John Sayles, he is excellent ... but not on this film.

I'm just trying to be realistic here for anyone looking for an unbiased opinion. Sayles was 28 or 29 at the time he made this and it was his first film, made by novices on a shoe string budget. Seriously now, how good could it be? Yet it is not the low budget feel that bothers me about this film, although it is quite annoying with it's monkey camera operators, stag film bad lighting and camcorder like sound. It is not the wooden and forced acting on the part of it's inexperienced cast, who, I am not saying is amateur, but every time they would speak their eyes would roll back in their head and the rest of the cast would mouth the line along with them. It was not the unattractive boring cast whose idea of an interesting character choice is singing like Dan Fogelberg on ludes or doing bad impressions of Humphrey Bogart. No, the thing that is really annoying about this film is it's tedious and pretentious script. To think that anyone would be interested in watching a film about a group of uninteresting unmarried unscrupulous 30 year olds kvetching about life as they jump from bed to bed is pretty cocky on the part of the author. If you are not going to have an interesting storyline, you had better have some damn good dialog, like in Diner or Manhattan, or at least an interesting character like in Yojimbo or The Good The Bad and The Ugly, or even Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Several here on the IMDb have praised this films dialog. My guess is they are members of a secret Hippie society that have a Gestapo like fervor for anything that espouses hippie virtues. In reality, the dialog is juvenile at best. It romanticizes such lofty ideals as bean farts and the nuances of puking. The rock band Rush is referred to as a "progressive" band (in 1980? What? Perhaps in 1975 stoner circles), a small tip off as to how out of touch the script is.

A large portion of the script is dedicated to events that have nothing to do with the story. I suppose this is to help develop the characters, but shouldn't those characters first be worth developing? Come on, John, it's bad enough we have to watch the actors suck at acting, do we have to watch them suck at charades as well? What would make you think we would enjoy watching them argue about obvious political opinions, girls playing Clue, or men diving naked into a river? (note major shrinkage factor in chilly New Hampshire water) Speaking of which, what's with that strange leg tuck David Strathairn did every time he took a dive? He looked like a Don Martin cartoon from MadMagazine. That was the final straw for me. I'll bet Richard Nixon could dive better than that. Hypocrites.