Alda, Alan

The Four Seasons

Three married couples are all best friends until divorce strikes one couple, putting a strain on the close-knit group.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 31-MAY-2005
Media Type: DVD

Actually, this comedy is one of the more enjoyable films to examine midlife crisis in the 1980s. Written and directed by Alan Alda, it examines the effects of middle age on a group of married couples who are longtime friends. Each season they go away on a vacation together, but the dynamic gets skewed when one of the men dumps his wife for a younger woman. Though some may find the characters' self-satisfaction and upscale neuroses a shade cloying, they are more than matched by Alda's solid, often funny writing. The couple with the biggest laughs: the hilariously paired Jack Weston and Rita Moreno (although Alda and Carol Burnett also strike comic sparks). --Marshall Fine

M*A*S*H - Season Four (Collector's Edition)

One of M*A*S*H's best and must-own seasons marked a turning point for this Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning series. It would be the last for peerless comedy writer Larry Gelbart (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Tootsie), who developed M*A*S*H for television and served as the series' comic voice, conscience, and beating heart. But this old soldier did not just fade away. He concluded his tour with "The Interview," the stunning season finale and a series benchmark. This black-and-white episode, which he wrote and directed, features Clete Roberts interviewing the members of the 4077th (with the notable exception of Loretta Swit's Major Houlihan) about life and death at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (a special citation to William Christopher as Father Mulcahy, who provides the episode's most dramatic moment reflecting on how the doctors warm themselves on the steam that rises from the patients' open wounds).

Reporting for duty in season 4 is Mike Farrell as B.J. Hunnicutt, a welcome replacement for the departed Wayne Rogers. In the Emmy-winning season opener, "Welcome to Korea," Hawkeye (Alan Alda) takes the overwhelmed B.J. under his wing. By episode's end, he is drunk and addressing the insufferable "head twerp" Major Burns (Larry Linville) as "ferret face." The second episode brings a "Change of Command" with the arrival of Henry Morgan as Col. Potter, "regular Army," but compassionate and capable. The Gelbart years were distinguished by the deft balancing of comedy and drama (M*A*S*H is that rare comedy series that plays better without a laugh track, which this set offers as a viewing option). In the Gelbart-directed episode "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?," a wounded bomber pilot identifies himself as Jesus Christ. Gelbart also directed and co-wrote "Hawkeye," an Alda tour de force in which Hawkeye takes refuge with a non-English-speaking South Korean family after overturning his jeep and sustaining a concussion, requiring him to talk nonstop to keep from losing consciousness. The departure of key creative and ensemble personnel would be enough to fatally wound a lesser series, but M*A*S*H would solider on. --Donald Liebenson

As the fourth season opens, Hawkeye returns from a 3-day R&R pass in Tokyo to find Trapper has been sent Stateside. Hawkeye races to the airport but arrives just as TrapperÂ's plane takes off. Too late to tell his friend good-bye, he in nevertheless just in time to welcome TrapperÂ's replacement, Captain B.J. Hunnicutt. Once Hawkeye gets over his anger and disappointment, he realizes B.J. is a worthy ally and takes the newcomer under his wing. Â"The first thing you learn here, B.J., is that insanity is no worse than the common cold. YouÂ've heard of a military post? Ours is a compost. Only the wounded are new. The tedium is relieved only by the boredom. So pitch in, muddle through, pip-pip. Never mind the reason why, ours is but to do and not let Â'em die.Â"

Then Colonel Sherman T. Potter arrives to take over command of the 4077. Not only are Frank and Hot Lips outraged that Frank has lost his command so quickly, but Hawkeye and B.J. know that a Â"liferÂ" Army commander could spell big trouble for them. But then a single reminiscence from Potter puts the docs at ease: Â"Had a still on Guam in World War II. One night it blew up. ThatÂ's how I got my Purple Heart.Â"

Betsy's Wedding

Alan Alda wrote, directed, and starred in this lightweight comedy about a wedding and the havoc it causes in one family. Dad (Alda) wants it big and splashy; Betsy (Molly Ringwald), the one who's actually getting married, wants something small and personal (and is even considering eloping). As the momentum shifts back and forth between lavish and intimate, other comic tussles are played out in the background--such as how Dad is going to pay for all this. The best moments belong to the odd couple of Ally Sheedy and Anthony LaPaglia: She's a cop and the bride's sister and he's a Mafia underling who discovers he has a thing for a woman in uniform. Even if it doesn't add up to much, it's painlessly entertaining nonetheless. --Marshall Fine

Like PARENTHOOD and MOONSTRUCK, BETSY'S WEDDING is a funny, feel-good movie about a wonderfully eccentric family and their hilarious trials and tribulations -- it's about everything but their daughter's wedding! Anything can and does happen when the funky bride-to-be casually announces her engagement, setting off a series of crazy events, including accidental meetings with the mob, oddball romances, and riotous revenge schemes! BETSY'S WEDDING is the perfect comedy hit, featuring an all-star cast and an irreverent story filled with all the warmth, wackiness, and humor you won't want to miss!

Sweet Liberty

Alan Alda's follow-up to the hit comedy The Four Seasons, Sweet Liberty is an intermittently successful and lighthearted comedy that imagined what would happen if the past and present collided via Hollywood. It also provided a blueprint for David Mamet's State & Main, which took a similar premise and satirically ran amok with it. A local history professor who writes a surprise bestseller about the Revolutionary War, Alda is a man contending with a fairly mundane life until a Hollywood film crew shows up in his hometown to turn his book into a movie--one that's filled with loads of sex and violence, unlike the scholarly tome it's based on. And the drama that's being filmed soon spills over to real-life, as Alda falls in love with the actress playing his book's heroine, and his fiancée (Lise Hilboldt) becomes enamored of the movie's leading man. Alda and Hilboldt may be the film's central couple, but it's the movie stars they're fascinated with who will catch your eye: Michael Caine, right before he embarked on his career renaissance, and a young Michelle Pfeiffer, who for the first time got to show off her beguiling comic side. As the lothario leading man with eyes for any woman who crosses his path, Caine is the kind of charming cad you can never really hate for too long. And Pfeiffer, who gets the benefit of playing both the innocent maiden of the movie-within-the-movie and her neurotic, real-life counterpart, neatly tucks the movie into her bodice and saunters off with it. --Mark Englehart