Paul is the most normal. He seeks to date Libbets (Katie Holmes, in her film debut), a brunette hottie from his literature class. But he will have to act fast, because Paul's college roommate Francis (David Krumholtz) is bound to sleep with her soon.
Paul's younger sister, Wendy, is determined to explore her sexuality by experimenting with the Carver brothers, who are more than willing to help. Mikey, the older brother, is a space cadet, while Sandy stills plays with his toys, although mostly these days he's blowing them up.
The Carver's marriage is troubled, because Ben is having an affair with the completely jaded Janey. Elena surmises the affair, and reacts with passive-aggressive pathos. We've left out Jim, but he's limited to a clumsy encounter with a revenge-minded Elena.
On the night of a winter ice storm, the Carver and Hood adult couples participate in a large neighborhood "key party." The men place their keys in a bowl. The women draw keys at random, and spend the night with the man whom the keys belong to. I suspect that suburbia "key parties" are more of an urban legend than a reality, but if they ever took place on any scale, it was before the herpes and AIDs scares of the 1980s.
How others will see it. This film was ignored by the Academy Awards, who after all had no way of knowing that four of the 'child' actors would later become moviestars (Holmes, Maguire, Ricci, Wood). Still, it did well on the festival circuit, and the imdb.com user ratings are generally high. Older viewers gave it slightly lower ratings, perhaps because they never heard about "key parties" before either. Wife swapping is done, of course, but it is more discreet than a neighborhood-wide invitation.
One demographic did not care for the film: teenage girls. This surely has to do with Ricci's character, who seems inordinately interested in the physically unappealing younger Carver brother.
How I felt about it. I've already expressed my doubts about "key parties" and Ricci's unquenchable sexual curiosity. I also suspect (and this is admittedly a minor point) that Pringles cans were hard to find in 1973 New England. Maguire's behavior toward his passed-out dream girl, Libbets, is far more chivalric than can be expected of a hormone-driven young man. And even dumb teenagers know better than to aimlessly wander around outside at night when it is freezing rain, much less risk their lives jumping up and down on an icy diving platform over an empty cement pool.
All of this risky, dubious, and self-destructive behavior by the entire cast made the film difficult for me to watch. The Ice Storm is the cinematic equivalent to the wreck on the highway. Some that drive by slow down and turn their heads to look. Are they hoping to see a bloody body stretched out between the shattered windshield and the hood? Others driving by look away. That is my reaction to this film. If our 1973 suburbs were this messed up, no wonder Nixon carried 49 states in the 1972 election. He was no more corrupt than anyone else.
Hard to believe that the director is Ang Lee, whose immediately preceding film was an adaptation of Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility (1995). I enjoyed that film more, because its characters were sane.