The Four Seasons (1981)

	Directed by: Alan Alda	COUNTRY USA GENRE Drama/Comedy NORWEGIAN TITLE De fire årstider RUNNING TIME 108 minutes
	Produced by: Martin Bregman
	Written by: Alan Alda

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Jack Burroughs	Alan Alda	½
Kate Burroughs	Carol Burnett	½
Nick Callan	Len Cariou	½
Anne Callan	Sandy Dennis
Claudia Zimmer	Rita Moreno
Danny Zimmer	Jack Weston	½
Ginny Newley	Bess Armstrong	½

Review

Alan Alda's feature film debut as a filmmaker revolves around those traditional human values that have always occupied him: relationships, psychology, and human emotion. The film opens with both a nice premise and a delicate structure, as Alda tells his story of three 40-something couples who experience ups and downs through a series of collective vacations, backdropped against Vivaldi's wonderful The Four Seasons.

The film is good-hearted, and during the first half also poignant and funny. We become acquainted with three couples whose closeness and joie de vivre are amiable and infectious. This is Alda at his best – simple and sincere, and not afraid of embracing life. Then the film shifts in tone, as one of Alda's friends breaks the pattern and forces all of them to rethink their situations. The friends' next vacation – on a sailboat – represents the film's best part: the different characters crystallise, and Alda's script is crisp and insightful.

Unfortunately, he cannot keep it up. The second part of the film has some serious flaws – mostly to do with uneven writing. The acting is fine throughout, but the skilful performers can only do so much with a script that makes them progressively less distinct and more identical. Our six protagonists take turns throwing fits in one moment and squaring up the next, while constantly overanalysing on the surface, but rarely truly touching something deep. As a result, the film wears out its characters, and the characters wear us out. Like Woody Allen at his weakest, Alda doesn't know how to make his characters shut up, as he desperately wants them to talk their way out of every situation and problem.

That is not to say that The Four Seasons isn't enjoyable. This is the sort of film that if you recognise yourself in the setting, you may be able to draw inspiration from these people's shortcomings. Like with most of Alda's work, his intention is to be uplifting and optimistic, and that quality shouldn't be undermined in films like this. The implicit pleasantness running through it makes The Four Seasons impossible to dislike. It's just that you'd want it to succeed more than it does in all its many analyses, and thus be a little less like its lead character.