Customer Reviews

Small Circle of Friends [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A story set in the 1960's of the imagination, A Small Circle of Friends by the use of a young and almost self conscious cast manages to convey the wonder,possibilities and awkwardness of the time.

While giving an idealized view of Ivy League life of the period a viewer familiar with the time will still find so much that is achingly real.

In a word the show is evocative. There is a scene were Jameson Parker stands in the rain reading aloud the names of men killed in Vietnam as apparantly uncaring crowds pass by. Been there-done that and seeing it again brought back the feelings.

That is the strength of this movie. It may not be great art but it is good cinema. It lets you look back and see and it punches the right buttons. It is well worth the watching.

I love this film! Small Circle captures the essence of the late sixties' imagination and possibilities; it embraces the era's sense of romance while examining its explosive political and cultural turmoil. The film focuses on the relationships of three young people as they go through four years at Harvard, circa 1967-1971, the peak of sixties' awareness and excesses. While there may be some weaknesses in the filmmaker's attempts to cover as much as possible from the sixties in terms of issues (an aspect of the film I particularly adore but others do not), the depth of the three friends' love and commitment to each other ties everything together. Brad Davis' intense energy is alive even in this early film of his--his talent is sorely missed.

This one's fairly well-hidden, after all when I originally saw it a few conservative [ahem!] audience members walked out in disgust just as Brad Davis, Karen Allan and Jameson Parker decided to become 'close' friends - nothing shocking, but slightly too much back then and probably today. [Yes, it does somewhat touch on the world of the bi-sexual, or is it just experimentation? It is also a rather good movie about EMOTIONAL CONTACT between three young people.]

It covers THAT radical period in our history [Viet-Nam and all of that!] - students exploring and discovering various 'things'. Don't ever mix love and politics I guess!

BUT it's more of a memory play - along the lines of a modern 'Our Town'. These are also great minor performances in the movie - the conservative guy who turns radical with deadly results.

MISS Brad Davis spontaneous talent - gone too soon - something of the Dean quality there and Dean would probably have approved of this movie.

Also equally stellar? Mr. Parker and Ms. Allen for just daring to be so bold!

Bravo!

[Then there's also the somewhat period but 'based on fact' - "Jules and Jim" - not forgetting "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"]

I will say one thing for this Cohen movie: unlike the 80s actors of my generation who were obsessed with the 60s, this movie actually feels like it was filmed back then...to a degree. I'm so sorry, but if you have read my profile, you just already know what I'm going to say. Jim Steinman's music for one thing: I recognized "Total Eclipse of the Heart," "Making Love Out of Nothing at All," and "Faster than the Speed of Night" in the soundtrack. A subpar pop composer for Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler can't find anything new to compose, and neither can his henchman find any new ground to break about the 60s.

Brad Davis's character, easily the most appealing and annoying by turns is some combination of Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. Gee, we didn't see this disturbed pretty boy coming from eons away. Jameson Parker, who spends most of the time either looking like a 1979 era Roger McGuinn or same era Andrew Gold is boring and makes me want to puke. He got into a BAR FIGHT! WOW! Karen Allen? Don't get me started. Want to talk about overacting? She's the worst. If there is something going on between these three characters, Cohen does more of a brushing up on it than Natalie Wood did in her Gypsy striptease sequences, but that's okay. I know Cohen basically used David Crosby's "Triad" for the very basis of this tripe anyway, and it shows in spades. This is two hours of my life I'll never get back, and the hillbilly underground explosion wasn't even rewarding.

Take my generation as we are. I'd still prefer our movie, 1969, to this horrible posturing. At least you know Robert Downey Junior, Keifer Southerland, and Wynona Ryder had more sincerity in their performances, and the music was ten times better.

"A Circle of Friends" was obviously a low-budget film that dealt with life in the 60's and 70's. This film includes the Vietnam War, the drug culture, free sex and hard-hitting personal issues. It took me a while to get through the movie because I felt it could have been done so much better. The script was juvenile and so predictable. The acting was, well, over-acted, melodramatic and did not showcase these three actor's potential. But with what they had to work with, this is a good movie for young people to see who did not live through these eras. It showcased a time of unrest amongst the young and taking it upon themselves to change the country's stale direction. Unfortunately, we have gone back to the stale way of running things. I miss the changes that took place by a nationwide multitude of young people fighting for causes and making sure the government knew how we felt. Now, I feel like a sheep just mixed in with the apathetic herd. Baaaaa. If you have not lived through these eras, please see this film. See what WE did for YOU.

The most resonant element of director Rob Cohen's film is the music score by Jim Steinman, which includes the melody that was later recorded as Total Eclipse of the Heart. Otherwise this tale of a supposed menage-a-tois between Harvard university students Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker is as dramatic as the cartoon opening and closing sketches. The screenplay by Ezra Sacks attempts coverage of the Vietnam era from 1967 to 1971 from a student activist point of view, but the tri-romance hardly seems from the same era since it isn't until towards the end that there is any suggestion of bigamy. There is also even less suggestion of homosexuality interest between Davis and Parker. When the 3 finally go into the same bedroom, the camera is left outside and the door closed. Their lack of involvement in activism is paralled with the radicalisation of a Texan boy scout who comes to Harvard at the same time and ends up a terrorist, and highlighted by a campus riot that comes out of nowhere. Even the Vietnam connection as a comment on the relationship and vice versa doesn't work. Sacks opens with Parker reuniting with Allen in "the present" before we start flashbacking to 1967, with Davis' absence pre-empting the outcome, and Cohen supplies matching love scene montages. Davis' has steam so apparently is more erotic and ends abruptly, whilst Parker's is set to Chances Are and ends more positively. Sacks has 2 lines I liked - a technique of breaking into a glass window "I saw it on I Spy or was it The Untouchables", though Cohen repeats it, and "Only men would come up with a draft lottery using balls". Utilising period TV and photographic images - the assassinations of the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King - and a series of bad wigs, the only sense of reality and truth comes in a moment when someone sings the Star Spangled Banner to TV closure. Davis has the impossible charming/wild man role, not helped by his looking older than the others, and the best he can do is stare child-like for vulnerability. Allen doesn't have a strong screen persona so it's easy to think one is watching Amy Irving or Janet Margolin or Brooke Adams. Of the 3, Parker probably comes off best even when saddled with a Colonel Sanders look. His character's basic dullness is probably the reason he needs to be reunited with Allen. Even when the competition is Davis, anyone that prefers to experiment with rats rather than go to an Ingmar Bergman film is definitely worth reconsidering as a partner. Watch for Shelley Long as a photographer, and Daniel Stern, billed as Dan.

one of the best there is to see ann arbor in 1970

I got paid $35.00 for 12 hours work. Brad Davis pushed me in the critical student protest scene. I'm the one in the blue sweater.