The Four Seasons (1981)

From my favorite movies..

A Disappointing Continuation

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

To be honest, I'm not always the biggest of fan of ensemble casts, and wasn't here, either. This is one of those movies that doesn't seem to go anywhere but exactly where you think it will go: It starts out with 3 couples fairly happily vacationing together. Without much thought you know what the trend is going to be -- the one or more of the relationships will fail, and that as the vacations progress someone will get dumped, others will stick, tensions will rise. The only question left is who will stick, who will exit, what will the tensions be about. So in terms of plot...yawn. And, some of the scenarios seem rather forced. Jumping into a lake in cold weather. Really? Hardly being phased after breaking through the ice and spending quite a few minutes in freezing water? Especially when you're an overweight unhealthy man? That's not to say that I didn't like the film, because I did enjoy several of the individual performances. Alan Alda is someone I enjoy watching every once in a while; more a television than a movie actor; but he always seems sort of the same in everything he's in. That's why I enjoy him occasionally. Interesting to see Carol Burnett is a more serious role, and although television was clearly her medium, I wish we had seen her in more movie roles. Len Cariou...seems like a decent actor, but not handsome enough to be "up there"; every once in a while he turned in a good performance worth noting; not sure this was one of those times, although he does "okay". Jack Weston, an actor I had pretty much forgotten about, but he was always reliable and is so here. Rita Moreno is here...and that's about all I can say about her in this film; they don't give her that much to do, even though she is one of the 6 main characters. Sandy Dennis was one of those quirky actresses that was just right in certain types of roles, and she does nicely here. I would actually give highest marks here to Bess Armstrong; very good at playing naive, but building to an understanding of that.Okay, so I watched the film. Once. Is enough.

Another reviewer mentioned how this movie has changed for them since they first saw it - and not in a good way.For me, "The Four Seasons" has only become more relevant.I'm watching this on Encore as I write this. When I first saw this back in 1981, I was 16 and getting ready to entire my senior year in HS. I absolutely fell in love with this film but my perspective as a teenager had me seeing these people as my parents generation and wondering if when I reached their age I would have this kind of relationship with my adult friends. I also wondered if such people really existed. I laughed at the situations and the lines but without any real world experience.Now 30 years later, I have a very different perspective on things. I not only see myself (or aspects of myself) in each of the various characters, I find that the dialogue and relationships as presented in the film ring very true. When you are friends with other people for a long time, you do know each other well enough to be able to criticize, annoy, care about, and cherish one another the way these people do.I have also run into and had to deal with people that are essentially carbon copies of the people portrayed in the movie. I know Jack and Kate, Danny and Claudia, Nick, Ginny, and especially Anne. These people are real - not just characters written into a screenplay. They live in my town. Their fears, dreams, and neuroses are all familiar.Alan Alda was able to capture authentic portrayals of people by an outstanding cast. And while all movies are a distillation of sorts of character types, the individuals in this film seem particularly authentic to me.30 years later, I find this still to be a terrific movie. It is timeless in its message, and the emotions (humor, sympathy, anger) I experience come from a genuine understanding of and kinship with these people and their situations.

The only redeeming feature of this film was Bess Armstrong's hotness. She looked gorgeous. That's it. Carol Burnett was absolutely not funny, Rita Moreno was bland as cottage cheese, and Alan Alda was...well...Alan Alda, the schmuck who would probably much rather watch figure skating than a football game. The line where Alda says, "He's the Muhammad Ali of mental illness" was stolen directly from a line on "The Bob Newhart Show". When, at the beginning of the movie, Sandy Dennis is dumped by her husband, it was a rather shocking blow to this close-knit group of best-friend couples. Yet she was ultimately betrayed because everybody accepted it. In reality, it would have been her philandering husband who would have been kicked out. Instead, even the two other women of the group seemed quite unsympathetic. The ending seemed to address some issues. Bess Armstrong's character lost her cool and complained loudly about not feeling a part of the group and having to please her fiancé's friends. But when Alan Alda's character fell into a snit and tried to trash the lodge room, it seemed like a wimpy guy flailing around hoping to get a hug.Pretty pathetic. It's basically about elitist upper-class people acting like they're better than everyone and not having a good time.

Twenty-five years since its initial release, this 1981 comedy from Alan Alda, its director, writer and nominal star, still holds up pretty well. In fact, I just saw Norman Jewison's 2001 film, "Dinner with Friends", which feels like a partial remake in following the friendships that evolve among married couples hovering around middle age. Using Vivaldi's familiar string concertos as a transitional device, Alda's film concerns itself with three upscale couples who take vacations together every season, consequently we get four vignettes over the course of a year. It's a contrived plot machination with no sense of climax, but it all seems to fit the contours of the story.Jack is a lawyer who would like nothing more than have group therapy sessions with his friends, while his wife Kate, a magazine editor, is a no-nonsense woman who sometimes gets frustrated with Jack's constant emotional insulation. Danny is a neurotic, penny-pinching dentist married to Claudia, an artist with the hot temper of her Italian roots. Nick is a philandering insurance agent who wants to divorce his wife Anne, a housewife frozen by her self-doubts. It is the dissolution of this last marriage that provides the impetus for the group to examine the state of their relationships with their spouses and friends. The group starts out with a spring fishing trip when Nick confides to Jack about his need for a divorce, followed by a Caribbean summer boat trip when Nick brings his new nubile girlfriend Ginny, a wide-eyed stewardess. The fall has them visiting their kids in college, and a soccer match proves to be a test of wills among the men to prove their virility to Ginny much to the chagrin of the wives. The last piece takes them to a wintry cabin where true feelings are exposed, especially as Ginny exposes the women for their vindictive exclusionary tactics.The acting is solid. Alda seems to be doing a send-up of his own sensitive male persona as Jack, and a wisely cast Carol Burnett is actually pretty subtle as Kate. These two were such huge TV icons in the 1970's that the impact of their goodwill is almost instant. As the most comic pair, Rita Moreno and Jack Weston provide most of the laughs as they banter and bicker like Fred and Ethel Mertz redux. Broadway actor Len Cariou manages the insolence and liberation of a husband set free, while Sandy Dennis brings a palpable dimension of sadness to the socially ejected Anne. Bess Armstrong plays Ginny with an apt sunniness masking a burning need for acceptance. The story leads to little beyond a funny sight gag and an implication that Ginny will become more integral to the group, but the dialogue is often shrewdly observant and sometimes cannily witty. Alda doesn't quite have Woody Allen's sharp acumen in producing genuine laughs out of the human condition, but the film generates a good time while it lasts. The 2005 DVD has no extras.