pvilleguy Review of Four Friends

Four Friends (1981)

I missed it

[5/10 · 10 July 2006]

I saw this movie many years ago. Maybe I need to rent it and see it again. The gushing, ecstatic reviews I'm reading here either mean I missed something very special or that only people who thought this to be the equal of the greatest films ever made bothered to write on it. My recollections of this movie are that it was a disappointingly disjointed story given that Arthur Penn was the director (he had previously directed two of my personal favorites, "Bonnie & Clyde" and "Little Big Man") and Steve Tesich the screenwriter. "Coming of age" films portraying "slices of life" can still have coherent, plausible story lines even as they try to weave the mundane into a larger story. This movie was lacking in both coherence and plausibility. Tesich's writing, so crisp and natural in "Breaking Away," seemed self-conscious and even pretentious here, trying to weave the stories of these four into the broader revolutionary changes sweeping the country in the time frame of the film. I thought Craig Wasson as "Danilo" was unfortunate casting -- he was wooden and unable to portray Danilo as a sympathetic character. Then again, maybe that's another problem with the writing. In any event, Danilo did not strike me as sympathetic, just pathetic -- a loser who couldn't move on from the vacuously ethereal Georgia (Jodi Thelen). Good lord, boy, get out some -- she's no prize. I'll try to find time to see this again soon and see what I missed and I will watch with an open mind, but I sure don't recall anything in this movie worth gushing about -- unless it's getting into a brawl with a full stomach.

****POST SCRIPT *****

I finally go around to taking a look at this again. I have to say my original comments stand. The dialogue was wooden and unnatural. THe broader cultural and social references seemed in large measure extraneous to the story. Not a movie I would recommend.