In a time when our cities are wounded, movies like Grand Canyon can help to heal.

Grand Canyon successfully recreates the random, haphazard ways in which individual lives intersect, and captures the sense of menace and disintegration that permeate contemporary urban life.

Grand Canyon finds Kasdan in firm control of a restrained and intelligent style. Eliciting first-rate performances from a well-chosen cast, he brings these to the screen with graceful eloquence - giving words as much weight as actions.

Grand Canyon is most gripping when Kasdan shows people waking up to the world and finding that they need more than bromides.

Ridiculously ambitious, though often likable and touching in its sincerity.

If sometimes this loose and anecdotal film loses dramatic pace, it always rights itself. And it remains steadily in touch with its best qualities - generosity, common sense and a mature decency that is neither smug nor sentimental.

The graceful and affecting Grand Canyon, with its flock of fortysomethings, is much more than just "The Bigger Chill."

Too often the film languishes as Mr. Kasdan poses Big Questions and then has his characters answer them in conversations that are so casual they seem improvised. [26 Dec 1991]

As sanctimonious as it is sincere, this is a well-meaning picture that is seriously stuck on itself, that can't hide its air of self-satisfaction. [25 Dec 1991]

A superbly heartfelt drama for six diverse actors, it is as colorfully striated as its majestic namesake - and almost as wide. The film's depth is another matter altogether.

[An] earnest, often moving but not totally successful film.

[Grand Canyon] eventually pulls its punches, taking an unconvincingly beatific look at the problems and dangers that have been so persuasively outlined in what has come before. But until it hits that false note, Mr. Kasdan's film is at least as fascinating as it is amorphous.

There are great scenes (many) and terrific performances, especially Glover and Woodard.

Canyon is similarly slick, though even more heavy-handed in hammering home its points. [26 Dec 1991]