Peter's Friends

Peter's Friends
November 13, 1992
BBC
Comedy, Drama
VHS
B+

This is sort of an autobiographical film, in that the cowriters Rita Rudner (who plays Carol) and Martin Bergman are married and he's British and she sometimes felt out of place with his friends from university.  And much of the cast, including director Kenneth Branagh (who plays Andrew, Carol's husband), met at Cambridge and remain friends to this day.  Branagh was then married to Emma Thompson (who plays Maggie), and Thompson's mother plays housekeeper Vera.  Hugh Laurie (Roger) and Stephen Fry (Peter) were such good friends that they would often team up on television shows together at the time.  Even Tony Slattery, who's appearing as outsider Brian, was at Cambridge.  Oh, and there are lots of Harry Potter and/or Jane Austen points on this one, but I'll get to all that in later reviews, except to say that Laurie and Imelda Staunton (here as Mary) would again play a married couple.

This discussion of the "incestuous" background is not out of place.  The movie is about bonding and quarreling and flirting in a tight-knit group, and how (not) to deal with outsiders.  It is a witty if sometimes crude movie, very quotable (especially Andrew's lines).  The drama sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but the film never ceases to be watchable, which is saying a lot for something that is almost solely dialogue.  The cast works well together (with Thompson probably the stand-out), although I will say that Slattery fan though I was and am (it was a pretty big thrill to see him be both goofy and naked), his later scenes don't really work.  Also, the script is a bit cliched and Peter's big reveal (at midnight on New Year's) doesn't pack the wallop it did twenty some years ago.

But there is an added poignancy, seeing the cast when they were relatively young (mostly mid 30s).  When I first saw the movie at 24, I couldn't relate to the feeling of not having accomplished all you'd imagined in your youth.  And I laughed my head off at the opening credits, seeing all those faces of '82 to '92 (yes, including Salman Rushdie), while now it's a time capsule, no longer a look at the recent past.  Similarly, the soundtrack was then filled with the hits of a few years before, and now (while still as good as ever) it is more definitely golden oldies.  In short, the movie doesn't mean what it did before, but then nostalgia never does.

Remembering