They couldn't have celebrated happier anniversaries if they were married to each other.


Based on Bernard Slade's Broadway play of the same name, this film is about George, a married New Jersey accountant (Alan Alda), and Doris, a housewife (Ellen Burstyn). The two accidentally meet in a Californian country inn in 1951. They have an affair, which they continue for the next 25 years, meeting only once a year for a weekend getaway at the same hotel. Through their long-running love affair, the audience witnesses the changes within America and its lifestyles over the course of a quarter of a century.


While Bernard Slade's acclaimed stage play earned a storm of praise, the movie received mixed reviews. Janet Maslin of the New York Times said, "Mr. Slade's screenplay isn't often funny, and it's full of momentous events that can't be laughed away . . . As directed by Robert Mulligan . . . Same Time, Next Year is both less and more than it could have been. By moving the action outdoors once in a while, or into the inn's restaurant, Mr. Mulligan loses the element of claustrophobia that might have taken an audience's mind off the screenplay's troubles. But he substitutes the serenity of a California coastal setting, and gives the film a visual glamour that is mercifully distracting. Mr. Mulligan seems to have been more interested in sprucing up the material than in preserving its absolute integrity, and under the circumstances, his approach makes sense . . . Mr. Alda isn't terribly playful, and he reads every line as if it were part of a joke, which only accentuates the flatness of the script. Miss Burstyn, on the other hand . . . brings so much sweetness to Doris's various incarnations that the character very nearly comes to life." [2]
Variety called the film "a textbook example of how to successfully transport a stage play to the big screen" and added "The production of Bernard Slade's play, sensitively directed by Robert Mulligan, is everything you'd want from this kind of film. And it features two first class performances by Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda."


Release Date: November 21, 1978 @ The Cinema I

Distrib: Universal

Boxoffice: $19,703,082 2013: $62,327,700