PETER'S FRIENDS
A film review by Andrew Hall
Copyright 1993 Andrew Hall
After someone dies, a group of old college friends reunites after many years to deal with the problems of their adult lives.
What's that? Has THE BIG CHILL just been rereleased?
No, but Kenneth Branagh's new film PETER'S FRIENDS is sort of a British BIG CHILL. Branagh (DEAD AGAIN, HENRY V) also stars, along with Emma Thompson, Rita Rudner, and Stephen Fry.
After the death of Peter's (Fry) father, the friends reunite at his father's mansion in rural England to spend New Years together. Promiscuous Sarah arrives with her latest love, Brian, who happens to have a wife and child. Neurotic Maggie (Thompson), an author and reader of self-help books, has a secret crush on one of the friends. Andrew (Branagh), a writer who has left England for Hollywood, finds that his American television star wife Carol (Rudner) is driving him nuts. Roger and Maggie, a husband-and-wife jingle-writing team, find their marriage endangered after the loss of their son.
Coming to Peter's house seems to allow everyone a chance to come to terms with life, in one way or another. Everyone, it seems, has a major crisis or a resolution of one except Peter, who appears mysteriously immune to such problems. But Peter drops his own sobering bombshell on his friends at the end of the film.
The characters in PETER'S FRIENDS are wonderful; we get to know them quickly. Many of the scattered laughs in the film come from laughing at the characters. I liked the women best of all. Rudner, a wonderful stand-up comedienne who also co-wrote the script, is delightful here as the vain appearance freak. Thopmson is also endearing as the hopeless neurotic who, with Rudner's help, suddenly blooms.
My biggest complaint with PETER'S FRIENDS was the ending, which comes too soon after Peter's revelation. I felt as though I were waiting for something else to happen.
This is a good film, especially if you like films with real characters. Perhaps the British element will put a few people off. But I hope PETER'S FRIENDS gets distributed more widely than it has been in Phoenix (only one theater). It is certainly better than many of the comedies coming out of Hollywood these days.
Though PETER'S FRIENDS is not laugh-a-minute - there are periods of intense drama between the laughs - I recommend seeing it.
- Andrew Hall
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