Four Friends

Arthur Penn’s nostalgic story of three guys and a girl (although it’s really 80% about one guy, 15% about the girl, with just a little time for the other two guys) going through the 1960’s.  There were a few things I liked.  I liked how it felt kind of like a John Irving novel.  I liked the lead performance by Craig Wasson.  I liked the personal nostalgia I felt from the locations (the Indiana Dunes, and the East Chicago neighborhood was very similar to my best friend’s Hegewisch neighborhood that I visited so often growing up).  And I liked the rotating narration… which unfortunately was completely abandoned by the second half.  But there were two big things I didn’t like.  Primarily the script, which has a tremendous amount of forced dialogue (oh lord, how I hate scenes where a character angrily admits being in love with someone he or she doesn’t want to be in love with), and tries too hard to tie the characters’ lives into contemporary events.  In the same category is the character of Georgia, who is very poorly written.  She’s half Magic Pixie Girl, half every stupid 60’s cliché you can think of.  She’s annoying, and the way Danilo keeps pining for her makes him seem more pathetic than anything else.  I was enjoying the movie for a good hour or more, but after the while the subpar writing wore me down.  Rating: 6

IMDb