While Moody\u2019s novel opens with Thanksgiving \u201cjust past and quickly forgotten,\u201d Lee and Schamus backtrack about a week to take in some of the gathering\u2019s preliminaries. This offers the viewer a proper introduction to the four members of the Hood family \u2013 on the day of Nixon\u2019s \u201cI Am Not a Crook\u201d speech, no less. Each in their own way is at a crossroads in their romantic and\/or sexual relationships, and all are just about as honest with each other as the president is with his country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Father Ben, who\u2019s ostensibly living the American Dream, is having an affair with hot-to-trot neighbor Janey Carver (who is more casual about it than he is). Mother Elena is searching for some sort of meaning (mostly in books) while fending off the awkward advances of a local preacher. Son Paul is enamored of a classmate at his prep school who is way out of his league and jealous of his roommate, who habitually beds every girl he shows an interest in. And daughter Wendy is alarmingly sexually aggressive for a girl of 14, dividing her attention between the Carver boys, Mikey and Sandy, who are bewildered by her alien behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To bring these characters to life, Lee assembled a top-flight cast, none of whom are merely playing dress-up in \u201970s fashions. They are<\/em> these broken people. Kevin Kline is the over-analytical Ben, who\u2019s capable of turning off his wife and lover in bed and<\/em> mortifying his 16-year-old son by giving him \u201cThe Talk.\u201d Joan Allen is the brittle Elena, who has her suspicions about Ben\u2019s extracurricular activities, but doesn\u2019t confront him with them right away, choosing instead to freeze him out. (Note Kline\u2019s expert hand acting when he tries to get intimate and she rebuffs him.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for their children, Tobey Maguire\u2019s Paul is our ostensible narrator, dropping observations about the latest issue of The Fantastic Four<\/em> into his voice-overs, and Christina Ricci\u2019s Wendy is the most overtly political of the bunch, her outspokenness prompting Ben to tell her to \u201cdrop the political assassination stuff.\u201d She\u2019s the one watching Nixon on TV, but Paul isn\u2019t completely apolitical, with a poster depicting Nixon and Agnew in prison clothes on his dorm room wall. Also on hand are Sigourney Weaver as Janey, Jamey Sheridan as her oft-absent husband, and Elijah Wood and Adam Hann-Byrd as their spaced-out and keenly observant offspring, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Naturally, things come to a head for all concerned the night of the freak weather event that gives the story its title. Ben and Elena attend a cocktail party they\u2019re surprised to discover is a key party. Paul heads off to New York City for what he believes is a date with his crush, the curiously named Libbets (Katie Holmes in her film debut), but when he turns out to be the third wheel, he decides to do something about it. And the unsupervised Wendy ducks a liaison with Mikey to spend time with Sandy, inadvertently teeing up the tragedy that follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What stands out about The Ice Storm<\/em> is how Lee and Schamus don\u2019t judge the characters, even when they\u2019re up to no good. There\u2019s a great deal of compassion, especially for the children who sense their family is on the verge of splitting apart, and can do nothing to alter that trajectory. Most surprising of all, though, is how funny it sometimes is, like the moment where Paul notices the record they\u2019re listening to in Wendy\u2019s room \u2013 his<\/em> record \u2013 is skipping, or Wendy\u2019s less-than-reverent Thanksgiving grace. And who can forget the scene with the Nixon mask? Without these moments of levity, the film would be too dour, so striking the right balance was essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Released at a time when just about every major studio had an indie shingle (in this case, it was Fox Searchlight Pictures), The Ice Storm<\/em> encountered rough sledding at the box office thanks to a slow roll-out that failed to build momentum. It also failed to garner any Academy Award nominations, as its predecessor did, but Schamus did have the Best Screenplay award he picked up at Cannes to console him. As for Lee, he found in Maguire the lead for his next film, the Civil War saga Ride with the Devil<\/em>, which looked back even further into America\u2019s past to explore the things that divide us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Ice Storm\u201d is streaming on the Criterion Channel in its full <\/em>Criterion Edition<\/em><\/a>, and as part of <\/em>\u201cThe \u201990s Do the \u201970s\u201d<\/em><\/a> collection.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ice-storm2-1024x576.jpg\")
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