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Best Friends

1982

Comedy / Drama / Romance

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 62% · 13 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 33% · 2.5K ratings
IMDb Rating 5.5/10 10 3418 3.4K

wedding reception screenwriter writing honeymoon hollywood co-workers relationship

Plot summary

When a professional couple, who have lived and worked together for many years, finally decide to marry, their sudden betrothal causes many unexpected difficulties. They soon find that being married is often quite different from being "best friends."

Director

Norman Jewison Photo
Norman Jewison

Top cast

Burt Reynolds Photo
Burt Reynolds as Richard Babson
Noah Hathaway Photo
Noah Hathaway as Lyle Ballou
Richard Libertini Photo
Richard Libertini as Jorge Medina
Jessica Tandy Photo
Jessica Tandy as Eleanor McCullen
480p.DVD
963.61 MB
718*406
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
1 hr 48 min
Seeds 8

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by fredrikgunerius 5 / 10

Could have been a good movie

Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, Rollerball) directed this supposedly romantic comedy about a middle-aged writing couple acting like teenagers at the behest of their respective parents. Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin wrote the script, based on their own relationship, and while it's not too difficult to spot the authenticity and potential, the script limits itself and gets too hung up on its own conundrums. After a fun start, in which the chemistry between stars Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn is palpable and very much enjoyable, the film starts to drag when the couple go on a road trip to their in-laws. It's all obviously meant to feel claustrophobic, but the film isn't just suffocating its protagonists; it's also suffocating itself. There's a lack of perspective here, which the filmmakers try to make up for with babbling, Allenesque dialogue, making the film's various stages seem perpetual and unforgiving. Reynolds and Hawn not only wear each other out, they also wear this entire film out. And Jewison is never able to find the tools to lift Best Friends out from its own misery. It could have been a good movie.
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Reviewed by masonfisk 4 / 10

A FRIEND WOULDN'T LET YOU SEE THIS...!

A reunion of sorts for director Norman Jewison & writers Barry Levinson & Valerie Curtin (who worked together on 1979's And Justice for All) on this comedy from 1982. Burt Reynolds & Goldie Hawn play screenwriters who are partners at work & partners at home who feel the stirrings of marriage but when they decide to tie the knot & visit each other's in-laws, the sinking feeling of regret soon settles in even as a film they have in production needs their services. Screaming 'inspired by real life', this tale clearly mirrored Levinson/Curtin's real relationship which gives us some interesting comic vignettes but not much else since as a couple on screen, Reynolds & Hawn look uncomfortable even when they're embraced in affection. Jewison hadn't directed such froth as this since his early days in the 60's when he made a couple of Doris Day pics so seeing him return to his roots, as it were, feels like many steps back rather than an evolution for this auteur.

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