Peter's Friends

You won't find a laugh track. Or even any side-splitting laughs. Its not slapstick, indeed most of the humor is directed ironically at the character who's making the self-deprecating comment. Its not really tragic - its a situation comedy of the old school, with great actors, a reasonable framework for them to perform, and no artificial beginning or ending, just characterization. Like many movies of this kind, you have to bring your brain along and do some of the work yourself. It is, however, an effort that will be greatly rewarded, and highly rewarding. So find the movie, watch it, think about it, and enjoy it. You'll probably continue to do so through many viewings.

And while its not out on DVD in the US, it available out on laserdisc (if anyone still has one - I did for many years). Not much, but its something.

This film has one of the best 80's soundtracks. It is a feel good movie with a great cast. Some very amusing moments and some sad moments but all in all it features the kind of friends we'd all love to have.

This movie has often been dubbed another rip off of The Big Chill. Except for the whole reunion bit, this movie bears little resemblance to the former. It is funnier, wittier and the characters are more clearly defined.The movie centers around Peter, whose father has just died and left him the house. He decides to have a big party and invite his friends from college that he hasn't seen in years.As it turns out, everyone has their problems. Roger and Mary have just lost a child,Maggie is trying to find a man and has her eye on Peter, who is definitely not interested,Sarah is involved with a married man and seems to have trouble getting involved with anyone who's available,Andrew and his Hollywood actress wife are having marriage problems.This movie is well acted, the script is well written,thanks to Rita Rudner and her husband Martin Bergman and the casting is excellent. Starring Stephen Fry as Peter,Kenneth Branagh as Andrew,Hugh Laurie as Roger,Emma Thompson as Maggie,Alphonsia Emmanuel as Sarah and Imelda Staunton as Mary.With Rita Rudner as Carol.

...If you don't believe me, you can hunt up a 1983 book called "Footlights: One Hundred Years Of Cambridge Comedy" which is the history of the Footlights amateur theatrical society at Cambridge- whose alumni have included since the 1950s most of the auteurs of post-music hall English comedy.

Footlights revues since 1960 have included the casts of Beyond The Fringe (Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett), Monty Python (all of them), The Goodies (Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor), Alas Smith And Jones, and Douglas Adams (Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy).

In 1981 the Footlights mounted an Edinburgh Fringe Festival show called The Cellar Tapes, whose cast included...Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, and Tony Slattery!

The Cellar Tapes show won the Fringe's Perrier Award and pretty much guaranteed everyone jobs for life in British TV and film. The scene of them at school doing an amateur theatrical show for the university dons is a reference to this, supposedly.

Of the film, despite an interesting concept, some good moments and a talented cast I found this film disjointed, emotionally cold, only rarely witty, and even faintly unbelievable at times --the scene where Thompson breaks down and cries is so reserved and smug it's like she can never really let go- which she never does in anything she's in anyway!

It's rather as if they want to thinly satirize themselves- but only thinly, as if they take themselves too seriously to open themselves to self-mockery. For a better take on this concept, I recommend the 1998 film "Final Cut" starring Jude Law which has the current mob of Britpack actors playing themselves in an improvised film-- often times for laughs.

It's amazing how far Branagh's star has fallen since 1992 when he was The Olivier People Actually Liked. I guess some people really do peak early- he did the movie of Henry V (and wrote his autobiography) when he was 26! Since then?....Anyone?...Bueller?

Good, solid drama in the best British style, replete with witty dialogues, more or less a showcase for Kenneth Branagh to bestow upon us something that is not in the least Shakespearian. Nicely-paced development lets the principal characters ease their way into the proceedings in an orchestrated way, such that there is a fine balance in screen presence as well as in the interwoven combinations of the players from scene to scene, very much in the straight theatre tradition. Therein lies a possible weakness: the film has a straight-jacket feel to it, as though indeed it was too severely and strictly transposed from the stage to the screen.

Very much in the vein of a `battle of the sexes', we have in `Peter's Friends' several couples meeting some years after graduating, supposedly to remember old times. I rather fancy that the ladies win this battle by a slight margin, as the performances by Imelda Staunton, Emma Thompson and Alphonsia Emmanuel manage to pull off a finely-tuned upper-hand over the gentlemen.

This is about the third time I have seen this film - and will doubtlessly see it again. However, having recently seen `Gosford Park' a couple of times, I cannot help marrying up the two films - and thus falling into the trap of comparing them. `Gosford Park' comes out clearly the winner: Altman's masterpiece.