All the boys love Georgia...and Georgia loves all the boys!

Also known as Moritorium and Georgia's Friends, Four Friends follows the titular quartet from high school to young adulthood. The film is set during the tumultuous 1960s, an era when everyone's values were turned inside out, shaken around, and reassembled. The central character is first-generation American Craig Wasson, who confounds his Yugoslavian father (Miklos Simon) by pursuing his own let-it-all-hang-out lifestyle. Wasson's best friends are athlete Jim Metzler and chubby Michael Huddleston; all pursue the affections of bewitching Jodi Thelan. Though they are obviously deeply in love with one another, Wasson and Thelan continue to foolishly avoid a long-term commitment as the sixties unfold around them. Four Friends calls for a fresher approach than the one offered by director Arthur Penn, whose handling of the material is much too pat and old-fashioned.

Four Friends is a 1981 American drama film directed by Arthur Penn. The semi-autobiographical screenplay by Steve Tesich follows the path of the title characters from high school to college during the often turbulent 1960s and beyond.

The cast features Craig Wasson, Jodi Thelen, Jim Metzler and Michael Huddleston, as well as Glenne Headly in her film debut.

In his review in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called it "the best film yet made about the sixties" and added, "It has the quality of legend, a fable remembered . . . [It] is one of Mr. Penn's most deeply felt achievements, ranking alongside Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, and Little Big Man. For Mr. Tesich, it is another original work by one of our best young screenwriters."[1]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described it as "a very good movie" and commented, "The wonder is not that Four Friends covers so much ground, but that it makes many of its scenes so memorable that we learn more even about the supporting characters than we expect to."[2]

TV Guide rates the film three out of a possible four stars, saying it "attempts to cover so much ground that at times the film becomes frustratingly muddled," and adding, "Though [it] runs out of gas toward the end, it's filmed with obvious love for the characters and features outstanding performances from the underrated Wasson, Thelen and Simon. Well worth seeing."[3]

Time Out New York says, "Although its episodic narrative entails a certain lack of unity, it's nevertheless an ambitious and impressive work . . . A dense but never pretentious film that manages to convey the atmosphere of the '50s and '60s succinctly, it offers delights galore, not least a light, perceptive wit and an unsentimental ability to touch the emotions."[4]

Channel 4 calls it a "stodgy, sentimental brew" and "a well-meaning film that doesn't really amount to much in the long run."[5]

During the 1960s, Danilo Prozor's free and easy lifestyle perplexes his Yugoslavian father. Danilo and his best friends Jim and Michael are all interested in the same girl, Jodi Thelan, even though it is obvious that she and Danilo are really in love with each other. But with the shifting mores of the sixties, the couple avoid making a real commitment to each other. As the years pass, the friends marry and divorce, make and lose careers, but their friendships remain constant.

Release Date: December 11, 1981


Distrib: Filmways


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