Peter's Friends

source: 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.

...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?

I had the misfortune to pay to see this film upon it's release. It came out at a time when Kenneth and Emma were the flavour of the month and could get away with any old rubbish, hence this film. It compares unfavourably with the Big Chill and is definitely derivative. The plot centres around the titular Peter and his upper class friends. Said friends are gathered together to hear Peter's news, no frivivolity ensues. I am truly amazed to see a film as turgid as this still manages to garner a 7.0 rating, it's much worse than that. The characters are largely unlikeable, over-privelidged and entitled. There may have been on set chemistry as the actors seem to gathered from Kenneth Brannagh's address book, however there is no on screen chemistry at all. The dialogue grates and clashes with English setting as does the mostly American soundtrack, quite possibly to help it attract a US audience. The end result is really something quite awful. There are no spoliers in this review, the movie couldn't be spoilt any further. It's been 27 years since I watched and I'm still irrated by the smug coziness of it as I force myself to remember it.

Film starts off on New Years Eve 1982 with a collegiate musical troupe giving their final bad performance. It cuts to 1992 where one of them named Peter (Stephen Fry) invites the whole group to his remote English castle for a New Years Eve party. We have the Andersons--Roger (Hugh Laurie) and Mary (Imelda Staunton). They've lost a child and she lives in fear that they'll lose the other. Then there's Maggie (Emma Thompson) who's madly in love with Peter. There's Sarah (Alphonsia Emmanuel) a sexually active woman who brings along her man of the moment (Tony Slattery). And there's Andrew (Kenneth Branagh) who's unhappily married to TV star Carol (Rita Rudner). This was called a rip off of "The Big Chill". It is, but it's well-made with a great cast, a wonderful script and is totally involving. This is one of the few movies that mixes drama and laughs and both work beautifully. It was also shot (I believe) on location in England and the setting itself is just incredible. All the acting is good across the board. Rudner is a delight (and has the best lines). Emmanuel sometimes overdoes her role but not enough to damage the film. Dramatic, witty, warm--basically a great comedy drama well worth catching. "Did you ever see "Upstairs Downstairs"?"

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.

They've ruined the film that was ably directed and populated by a group of very good British actors. "Peter's Friends" is so melodramatic, so full of whining and crying and complaining and "I'm sorry!" The plot set-up is manipulative and the ending gets too pat. At the start, as "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" plays on the soundtrack and as important 1980s events are shown on the screen, 10 years are passing for a group of two-bit actors. But nothing really important has happened to them to equate to the world events showing on screen, so why are they showing them? 2 of them have married, and just lost a twin to crib-death; thus the wife cannot have bear to have sex with her husband anymore. Suffice it to say, by the end of the film, they are having sex. Emma Thompson's character is single & desperately looking for a man that weekend to impregnate her. Suffice it to say, she gets one. Branagh's & Rudner's characters have a very unhappy marriage, and she is difficult to live with. Suffice it to say, she leaves Branagh & the film, the marriage is ending. One character is sleeping with a married man. He cries and runs back home later. She cries and gets upbraided by her friends. And the poor martyr Peter has, gasp, AIDS. Everybody cries when he tells them, Peter asks them to help him celebrate life, and then they all act like some cure will heal him. Too much cutting down a person behind their back, then having them overhear, then having the critic cry & apologize. A VERY disappointing effort from a group of actors who can do and have done a LOT better, in such films as "Much Ado About Nothing," "Sense and Sensibility" and others. "Peter's Friends" is not really worth your time.

When I first watched Peter's Friends, I was seventeen years old, still young and unexperienced. I wouldn't say that the five years since then have made me some sort of oracle, but I have made a few mistakes and also a lot of good choices. And even more, I am able to relate to the story that Kenneth Branagh's wonderful alternative to It's A Wonderful Life as a holiday film. Today it makes me laugh. It makes me embarrassed. It evokes so many feelings that are pivotal for the human spirit, so many things that are universal. If you have friends, or if you've lost them, or if you've met any people at all in your life, you will be able to relate to the six friends in Peter's Friends. What the heck, you only have to be human to relate to it. No other movie speaks so truly about us as human beings and how we behave in small social groups. Food for thought, but also for heart.

Dear IMDb, Here is an excerpt of the first draft of my proposed sequel, "Who Cares About You And Your Snotty, Self-Possessed Friends Anyway, Peter?" Kenneth Brannagh (smiling coyly) Isn't my life just so terribly interesting that the world would line up to see a thinly-veiled fictionalization of it? The World (yawns) Not particularly, no. This movie is the very definition of "vanity project" by a pretentious actor-director who's canon of work seems meant to bring "culture" back to mainstream cinema but always does so in a heavy-handed fashion. Kenneth, I am sure you and your real friends are oh-so charming as you sit around your country estate sipping wine and saying clever things, but please don't make the rest of us sit and watch it.