Continental Divide (1981) has become an overlooked chapter in the career of its screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan. Kasdan wrote the film while his previous script, The Bodyguard (1992), was caught in development hell. Continental Divide eventually landed with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin production company before it became known for its family adventure films. Much of the banter and the general sexual tension in Continental Divide would be refined later by Kasdan in his scripts for Star Wars and French Kiss (1995).
The position of Continental Divide in the career of Kasdan accounts for many of its shortcomings. It has plenty of charm, some decent jokes, but no clear sense of pacing. Plot threads and details are introduced that are immediately recognizable as foreshadowing or just essential to a character’s arc. There is no sense that the characters in Continental Divide have any life beyond their appearances on screen. Kasdan attempts the post-modern romantic comedy but is unable to fold all of his intertextual references into the fabric of the plot, thus creating a disjointed spectacle that is in no way emotionally immersive.
Director Michael Apted who helmed the production of Continental Divide is a journeyman filmmaker whose modus operandi is to serve the script, rendering it as effectively as possible. Apted’s forte as an auteur has always been limited to socially conscience fiction films or the documentary idiom. A romantic comedy like Continental Divide is well within Apted’s abilities, but he does not bring the same verve or ingenuity that a filmmaker like Mike Nichols would have.
In Continental Divide Kasdan pays homage to the comedies of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, represented here by John Belushi and Blair Brown. This environmentalist re-telling of Woman Of The Year (1942) has plenty of scenes that just about hit their comedic rhythm when, immediately after Belushi gets in an aside, the film fades to black. Both Belushi and Brown deliver in terms of charm, chemistry, and comedy but all of their efforts are undermined by the structure of the film itself that refuses to let the viewer live with the characters, opting instead to rush from one gag to the next.
Continental Divide is diverting enough even though there is little about the film to make it worth watching. It’s interesting as a stepping stone in the career of Lawrence Kasdan and really nothing more. Continental Divide is the kind of film one watches while staying in a cheap motel en route to someplace else. It’s not a bad movie, but it isn’t that good either.
