The semi-autobiographical script, written by collaborators Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin, is more or less about their marriage. In fact, they divorced around the time the movie was released -- not a good omen. The film has writers Richard (Reynolds) and Paula (Hawn) working on a new script as their previous project is in the midst of postproduction. The longtime lovers have bought a new home in the Hollywood Hills, which Richard sees as a cue they should tie the knot. In an interesting twist, particularly for a Burt Reynolds movie, he wants to settle down, while she's reluctant, believing marriage a surrender of one's youth, and one step closer to death.

Eventually though, they do get married, secretly by a justice of the peace (Richard Libertini, quite funny) with a speech impediment. They decide to spend their "honeymoon" visiting with their parents. After a cross-country ride aboard Amtrak, they arrive in frozen Buffalo, where Paula's highly eccentric parents, Eleanor (Jessica Tandy) and Tim (Barnard Hughes) reside. Later, they visit the Viginia condominium of Richard's too gregarious parents, Ann (Audra Lindley) and Tom (Keenan Wynn).

The film is flat and unfocused beyond words. Richard and Paula spend most of the film getting on each other's nerves, and squirrelly around their parents and in-laws. When they're not bickering, the couple seem mildly bored with one another, and talk in hushed, whispered tones for no clear reason. The picture is only fitfully funny, and its drama seems to have no idea what it wants to say. At times it attempts to satirize big money Hollywood (mostly in the character of an empty-headed, disingenuous studio head, played by Ron Silver), a parent/adult children comedy, and a drama about the disintegration of a marriage. All of these concepts have been realized far better in other films (parent-adult child relationships in Albert Brooks's Mother, for instance). Whatever Best Friends is though, it's not insightful and definitely not much fun -- unless watching Goldie Hawn sobbing in a fetal position is your idea of entertainment.

The three-ring circus aspect of the script is often at odds with itself. On one hand, it wants to take itself seriously as an adult portrait of men-women relationships. All too frequently, though, it falls back on tired caricatures, such as Jessica Tandy's doting, grandmotherly type who shocks Richard and Paula with profanity and blunt conversations about sex. Similarly, Silver's studio head seems like he's from another movie, while the long trip aboard the train is stocked with tired gags involving the usual cramped stateroom, obnoxious travel companions and the like. Though the picture amusingly makes Buffalo look like one endless blizzard, the Hollywood scenes lean on Southern California cliches (jungle-like vegetarian restaurant, mudslides, etc.).

The film's main conceit, that the couple was better off without a formal commitment, is half-hearted and unformed. The picture was made just as Reynolds's super-stardom period was beginning to wane. He tried to balance his awful, indulgent comedies with Hal Needham with more ambitious films, and he deserves credit for playing a somewhat atypical part and keeping his usual screen persona in check. Hawn also tries to shed her bubbly airhead image, but both actors mostly come off as dull. Tandy, Wynn, and Libertini are occasionally funny in their character parts, and director Norman Jewison tries hard to get consistent performances written inconsistently.

Video & Audio

Warner Bros. has given Best Friends the bare-bones treatment, hardly a surprise. At least the spherical Panavision OAR (1.85:1) is given 16:9 treatment, though the grainy color common to early-80s moviemaking isn't going win it any awards. The flat mono sound perks up only slightly for the several songs written for the film, which play as dated as one "hilarious" scene with Hawn zonked out on Valium. A French audio track is included, along with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. There are no Extras at all, not even a trailer.

Parting Thoughts

Considering the talent that went into this picture (Jewison, Levinson, composer Maurice Jarre, Reynolds, Hawn, Wynn, Tandy -- the list goes on), Best Friends can only be regarded as a major disappointment. Undercooked and mostly glum, this is an easy pass.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. He is presently writing a new book on Japanese cinema for Taschen.