Friendship is the topic in this film about three middle-aged couples who find their loyalties to one another and their marriages tested. Alda and Burnett play the "thoughtful" couple at the center of the sextet, which spends a year taking vacations together in each of the four seasons.
Weston and Moreno provide comic relief; Cariou and Dennis play the star-crossed twosome whose marriage falls apart, after which he marries a younger woman (Armstrong).
Much of the film's first half is sprightly and amusing, but the move toward serious drama later, and then a slapstick finale, is a bit hard to take. Alda's debut as a director is nevertheless impressive, even if he clearly doesn't know what to do with the camera. This latter problem is, luckily,
partly offset by Kemper's stunningly attractive photography of the Virgin Islands and New England.
It's good to know that movies can still be made with grown-ups in mind, even if the exceptionally nice quality of these characters occasionally makes you want to smack them. leave a comment
