Three couples--best friends--are seen on four trips together during the course of a year. Writer-director-star Alan Alda shows a surprisingly stylish eye for the beauty of the changing seasons, and as a writer he knows how to shake off the melodramatic doldrums and be funny, but his sense of style and pacing isn't helped by his need to be educational, to teach us all something about ourselves (this movie hints that maybe he's been in therapy too long). The film isn't whiny, but it has shapeless scenes that are overdrawn--and the longer they go, the more rambling they become. One couple separates and the man brings a new woman into the fold, but his ex-wife (the wonderful Sandy Dennis) is much more interesting and sympathetic than who we're left with. Two college-age daughters are introduced (played by Alda's real-life children),but they don't seem to be familiar with anyone at the table. The final act allows Alda's repressed character to finally react and blow off some steam, yet the responses he elicits (particularly from his wife, Carol Burnett) aren't believable--the characters all sound and act too much like each other for there to be nuances in their reactions. Burnett is tough to get a grip on here, and I don't know if it's the writing or just the tack she's taken here as an actress, but her rigid/passive/supporting-but-unhappy wifey doesn't showcase any particular feeling; Bess Armstrong, as the new friend, doesn't get a good strong scene until almost the end, and that's because Alda enjoys poking fun at her youthful idealism (even at the end, Armstrong is stuck with dippy dialogue like, "I'm going to take a run in the snow!"). The picture was a big hit, and it may spark conversations about friendships and our need to be around what is familiar--even if it nags at us--but Alda doesn't allow for solutions. He wants to create a mess, analyze the mess, and then throw up his hands and say "that's the way life is!" But this reality of his is plastic-coated, with TV-ready dialogue, and while he's an amiable filmmaker, he's never a self-satisfied one. **1/2 from ****

ALAN ALDA has sharpened the humor and tense situations that occur when three middle-aged couples decide to take vacations together through the four seasons, with some unexpected results. Most of the mishaps are on the funny side and there's a lot of wisecracking between the couples, some of which sounds an awful lot like TV situation stuff. CAROL BURNETT scores nicely as Alda's wife, adept as he is with one-liners.

But it's all done in a light-hearted way with the seasons bridged nicely by some transitional Vivaldi music. The story is how one couple (LEN CARIOU and SANDY DENNIS) is marked for divorce, which sets up the theme of antagonism toward the new woman entering the friendship circle and being mistreated out of spite. The new woman is played well by BESS ARMSTRONG and stand-outs among the other couples are RITA MORENO and JACK WESTON, as a bickering couple in the mold of Fred and Ethel Mertz.

The seasons are beautifully photographed and the tightly knit story structure makes the whole thing a pleasure to watch. Written and directed by Alan Alda, it's certainly a feather in his cap.

Alan Alda's movie career has been curious. I suspect that only a handful of titles really stand out for his performances, most likely this film, SENATOR JOE TYNAN, PURLIE VICTORIOUS (an early performance),AND THE BAND PLAYED ON (where he was a glory hound of a doctor in the A.I.D.S. epidemic),and CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (where he was an egotistical television personality, but one capable of being human). But Alda's talents are varied, including hosting a program on Channel 13 about scientific breakthroughs. Yet, most people think of Alda still as Dr. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce of the 4077 medical unit in the television series M.A.S.H. That show is now over twenty years old (but it's reruns hold up well),and Alda has appeared in good parts since on television - two years ago he and Jimmie Smitz were the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates seeking to succeed Martin Sheen on THE WEST WING.

THE FOUR SEASONS may be his greatest film role - one that included his writing the script and directing the entire film. The story is centered on three middle aged couples, all yuppie types, who are close friends: Jack and Kate Burroughs (Alda and Carol Burnett - this may be her best performance as well in film),Nick and Anne Callan (Len Cariou and Sandy Barron),and Danny and Claudia Zimmer (Jack Weston and Rita Moreno). The three couples spend all their vacations together, and this film is studying the three pairs of friends through one year together, each section being a vacation in each season (the background music being Vivaldi's THE SEASONS).

They are appealing couples on the surface, but as the film progresses cracks appear. Alda sees himself as a type of spiritual older brother to the other males, and both Cariou and Weston grow to resent it - Cariou in particular when Alda gives his views regarding the deteriorating marriage of Cariou and Barron. Barron is playing one of her patented neurotic women types - here she is a talented photographer, but in her current therapy all she can photograph is vegetables and fruit in geometric patterns. Cariou is tired, and has met a younger woman who falls in love with him. She (Ginny Newley - Bess Armstrong) replaces Barron in the second vacation, and remains in the group (Barron does show up in the third "Autumn" vacation, visiting the college that her daughter by Cariou is attending when he and the others show up there). Armstrong does awaken jealousy among Burnett and Moreno regarding the apparent efforts of their spouses to impress her with their physical prowess. And the three couples constantly wonder why they have to spend their vacations together.

The final section of the film shows the crisis between the set of friends and with Armstrong in particular. Alda's unsolicited comments of advice and disappointment to Cariou leads to everyone turning on him. The jealousy of the ladies (when Armstrong jumps to the defense of Weston after he admits some growing fears about dying) leads to her hitting out regarding how she resents their constant high regard for Barron (although they rarely see her) at Armstrong's expense. At the end of the film, a near tragedy (that is turned into a comedy by Weston's reaction to the loss of his status-symbol Mercedes) brings everyone to their senses, and to a realization that true friends accept each other's limitations or they drift apart.

The film is a wise one, and quite amusing. Look at the sequences with Weston where he keeps calculating what each couple owes for a dinner or a rental (of a cabin or a boat) and how Alda and Cariou keep wondering why he is doing this. Also Weston and Marino discovering that there is nothing wrong with skinny dipping in the Caribbean is quite cute, especially with Weston's last plunge into the water. Alda directed other films, but THE FOUR SEASONS remains his best personal work - and the most meaningful film of his career.