The Four Seasons (1981)

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.

The Four Seasons alternately tries too hard to be a Woody Allen film and too hard to be an animated and witty stage play. In Alan Alda's trite effort to be offhand and witty with his dialogue, character-driven story, and surprisingly occasional attempts at humor, he conversely succeeds in creating a film that is so contrived that the dialogue is laughably scripted and produced through lots of pacing around trying to spice up each line, and each humorous moment is more irksomely awkward than funny.There is one funny moment, and that's when Jack Weston finally gets fed up with Rita Moreno's constant proclamations of being Italian, even though it's overacted and overdirected.The acting is fine, because the cast is exceptional. It's a joy to see the hilarious Carol Burnett in a movie. However, their performances applied to such an unnatural and manufactured script just makes it even gawkier and tonally tainted.Alan Alda, though I've always enjoyed him as an actor, has disappointed me greatly by indulging so heavily in trying make something like something else the way someone else has already done it.

I think this movie defines Alda's talent for writing. He uses situations and feelings that people face or have faced in real life. Ever since I first saw Alan's first M*A*S*H episode that he wrote, I made it my job to see every movie that he stared and wrote in. His talent is unsurpassed and cannot be reproduced. I first bought this on Selectavision Videodisc, and now I own it on every format. Every time formats change, I make sure to get the updated copy of it. This is a must see movie for any Alan Alda, or Carol Burnett fan. "It all adds up to warmhearted enjoyment and sidesplitting fun in this fabulous new RCA VideoDisc" (Susan Zucker, quote taken from the RCA VideoDisc "The Four Seasons")

Three couples--best friends--are seen on four trips together during the course of a year. Writer-director-star Alan Alda shows a surprisingly stylish eye for the beauty of the changing seasons, and as a writer he knows how to shake off the melodramatic doldrums and be funny, but his sense of style and pacing isn't helped by his need to be educational, to teach us all something about ourselves (this movie hints that maybe he's been in therapy too long). The film isn't whiny, but it has shapeless scenes that are overdrawn--and the longer they go, the more rambling they become. One couple separates and the man brings a new woman into the fold, but his ex-wife (the wonderful Sandy Dennis) is much more interesting and sympathetic than who we're left with. Two college-age daughters are introduced (played by Alda's real-life children), but they don't seem to be familiar with anyone at the table. The final act allows Alda's repressed character to finally react and blow off some steam, yet the responses he elicits (particularly from his wife, Carol Burnett) aren't believable--the characters all sound and act too much like each other for there to be nuances in their reactions. Burnett is tough to get a grip on here, and I don't know if it's the writing or just the tack she's taken here as an actress, but her rigid/passive/supporting-but-unhappy wifey doesn't showcase any particular feeling; Bess Armstrong, as the new friend, doesn't get a good strong scene until almost the end, and that's because Alda enjoys poking fun at her youthful idealism (even at the end, Armstrong is stuck with dippy dialogue like, "I'm going to take a run in the snow!"). The picture was a big hit, and it may spark conversations about friendships and our need to be around what is familiar--even if it nags at us--but Alda doesn't allow for solutions. He wants to create a mess, analyze the mess, and then throw up his hands and say "that's the way life is!" But this reality of his is plastic-coated, with TV-ready dialogue, and while he's an amiable filmmaker, he's never a self-satisfied one. **1/2 from ****