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Not all scenes with Hugh Laurie are shown, and some have been edited

Cast & Credits
Peter: Stephen Fry
Maggie: Emma Thompson
Andrew: Kenneth Branagh
Carol: Rita Rudner
Produced And Directed By Kenneth Branagh. Running Time: 102 Minutes. No MPAA Rating.

Ten years ago they were members of the same comedy troupe, but now they've scattered, some to London, some to Los Angeles, and Peter to the comfortable estate he has inherited in the British countryside. Now he summons them back for a New Years' Eve celebration, at which there will be laughter and tears, anger and reconciliation, and halfhearted attempts to reconstruct whatever special empathy brought them together in the first place.

The structure of "Peter's Friends" is not blazingly original - "The Big Chill" comes instantly to mind - but a movie like this succeeds in its particulars. If the dialogue is witty, if the characters are convincingly funny or sad, if there is the right bittersweet nostalgia and the sense that someone is likely to burst into "Those Were the Days," then it doesn't matter that we've seen the formula before. This is a new weekend with new friends.

They arrive one at a time. Andrew (Kenneth Branagh) has gone to Hollywood, married Carol (Rita Rudner), and is now writing her silly sitcom. Sarah (Alphonsia Emmanuel) is still dating unavailable men, and her latest is Brian (Tony Slattery), who claims unconvincingly he is about to leave his wife. Roger (Hugh Laurie) and Mary (Imelda Staunton) have married and are making tons of money writing advertising jingles, but after the death of one of their twins, Mary is paralyzed with fear about the other one. Maggie (Emma Thompson) is still alone, still pining for the perfect mate; lately she has come to think it might be Peter. And Peter himself (Stephen Fry) is unsure of his own next step. Should he keep the old family home? The weekend will be a series of meetings and partings, dinners at which everyone talks at once, and chance encounters at which private thoughts are revealed. Some of those involve Vera (Phyllida Law), the housekeeper who has watched Peter grow up, and cares deeply for the way he never quite realized his potential.

The screenplay, by Rita Rudner and Martin Bergman, was originally written for mostly American characters, but this trans-Atlantic version became necessary when Kenneth Branagh signed on to direct. This project is not as ambitious as his "Henry V" and "Dead Again," but it shows a sure feel for the material, and a stage actor's cheerful willingness to go with scenes that work, even the bawdy and the sentimental. The audience must also be willing to go along, and I was, enjoying the bitchiness, the dramatic revelations, even the bad puns. (I have actually been at dinner parties where the host, asked for sugar substitute, explains that he has no Equal.) I suppose the closing revelation in "Peter's Friends" is more or less predictable, but that didn't destroy its effect on me. I found Stephen Fry's Peter to be an immensely likable character, as kind as he is rudderless, and I admired the way that Emma Thompson's Maggie was able to switch gears, from being his would-be lover to becoming his real friend. There was also real truth in the scenes between Peter and Vera, to balance the potted self-help cliches of the Los Angeles couple.

If film is basically a voyeuristric medium, then one of the questions that might be asked about "Peter's Friends" is: Would we like to be one of these friends, and attend such a reunion ourselves? I would. I liked this group better, in fact, than the friends in "The Big Chill," perhaps because they seem to like each other more, or perhaps just because they're more amusing.

KENNETH BRANAGH began his movie-directing career with a classical twist - his "Henry V" was greeted as the best Shakespeare adaptation in ages - and ever since, he's seemed determined to overcome the artsy reputation this earned for him.

Both of his subsequent pictures, "Dead Again" and the new "Peter's Friends," sweat and strain to be modern, breezy, and cool. They manage to be all those things, but there's nothing relaxed or easy-going about them. For all his talent, Mr. Branagh hasn't yet learned something the old Hollywood masters knew well: how to produce the art that conceals art.

"Peter's Friends" gets off to a rambunctious start, with six wacky entertainers camping their way through a zany musical number. We soon meet the performers off-stage and discover who they are - a bunch of creative collegians about to leave their schooldays behind and confront the real world. The movie then zooms into 1992, a decade after their musical farewell to youth and freedom. Life has treated each of them differently, and they've all accepted a weekend invitation to a friend's country estate, where they'll share news of the past 10 years.

If this sounds a bit familiar, it's because Branagh isn't the first filmmaker to explore this nostalgic terrain. In many ways, "Peter's Friends" is a British rehash of "The Big Chill," which was itself a rehash of "Return of the Secaucus Seven," which wasn't that great a picture to begin with. In principle, there's nothing wrong with movies about friends cooped up with each other for a few days, as long as the friends are so interesting and involving that we don't mind being cooped up along with them. The characters in "Peter's Friends" pass this difficult test for awhile, but eventually I started wishing they'd all go home so I could go home too.

The best thing about "Peter's Friends" is its acting. The word "ensemble" is overused by critics - some reviewers toss it around every time two performers show signs of recognizing each other's presence - but in this case it's fully warranted, since every member of the cast seems fully in sync with all the others, even in scenes where a single character gets most of the dramatic moments and good lines.

The performances are so imaginative that they cover up the rather calculated nature of the screenplay, which strives to please every possible audience by alternating comedy and pathos, vulgarity and refinement, frivolity and seriousness with clockwork regularity. There's so much energy and goodwill in the acting that you can't help enjoying much of "Peter's Friends" while it's actually before your eyes. The moment it's over, though, you realize how craftily it played on your emotions, how carefully it encouraged the responses it wanted you to have. It's a friendly movie, all right, but also an aggressive one that leaves you feeling a bit manipulated at the end.

AMONG the performers, Branagh and his wife Emma Thompson get top honors as (respectively) a Hollywood sitcom writer and a publisher of self-help books who hasn't learned to solve her own problems. Stephen Fry is also fine as the host of the party, a faded aristocrat with a secret that provides the story with its serious climax.

Other cast members include Alphonsia Emmanuel as the most glamorous of the partygoers; Tony Slattery as her giggly boyfriend; Rita Rudner as a lowbrow actress; and Hugh Laurie and Imelda Staunton as a married couple recovering from a terrible family crisis. Applause goes to all, individually and as a group.

Roger Lanser did the good-looking cinematography for "Peter's Friends," and Andrew Marcus contributed the snappy editing. The screenplay is by Ms. Rudner and Martin Bergman.

* The film, which has no rating, contains several scenes involving sexual activity, vulgar language, and other adult situations; part of the story also concerns the current AIDS crisis.

Picture, if you will, Kenneth Branagh, the '90s Laurence Olivier, and Rita Rudner, the '90s, er, Rita Rudner. In Peter's Friends, a mawkish, Big Chill-y contrivance set on an English country estate, the talented actor-director and the pinched comedienne play man and wife.

And if you buy that twosome, go ahead and buy your ticket.

Rudner, a whiny topicalist and standup comedy fixture, co-wrote Peter's Friends with her husband, producer Martin Bergman, whose friendship with Branagh goes way back. This apparently explains Branagh's involvement in this dubious enterprise, which plops together six kooky, angst-ridden friends (plus a couple of colorful tag-alongs) for a New Year's Eve reunion - 10 years after they've graduated college and moved on with their lives.

To an odd soundtrack of hits (Tears For Fears, Queen, Michael Nesmith, Cyndi Lauper - not exactly The Big Chill's gold mine of Motown), these six converge over a resplendent table to masticate good food and good memories.

Of course, every one of the chums - who performed together in a campus revue - is, way down deep, truly miserable. It takes a few drinks and a session or two of group therapy for all the neuroses to bubble up and fill the mansion - which they do, unpleasantly, like backed-up plumbing.

The Peter of the title, played by the John Cleese-ish Stephen Fry, is lord of the manor, a Sloane Ranger who has inherited his father's estate and housekeeper - a stoic, matronly woman who has tended to Peter since he was a wee lad. Vera, the housekeeper, is performed by Phyllida Law, who looks like nothing so much as Emma Thompson pushing 60. This is because Law is Thompson's mother.

Branagh's real-life wife, the sublime actress Thompson here portrays a bookish, thirtysomething spinster who fixes her sights on the sexually ambiguous Peter. Rudner, whose character is the star of a terrifically successful American sitcom, is the interloper - she had married Branagh's Andrew (he's a screenwriter) in the States, and this first visit with his old university pals leaves her feeling wan and detached.

There is also a dysfunctional couple (Imelda Staunton and Hugh Laurie) who write TV jingles and are in great pain over the loss of a young child. And then there is Sarah (Alphonsia Emmanuel), a vivacious creature who has brought her new lover along for the weekend. Said gent (Tony Slattery) turns out to be a loud, obnoxious drunk, further enlivening the proceedings. (And, presumably, the comedic possibilities.)

Why doesn't Peter's Friends work as the baby boomer-reverie and touchy- feely comedy it was intended to be? Mainly because it's impossible to feel kinship - or any sort of sympathy - for this self-obsessed troupe. Rudner and Bergman have fitted their subjects with stock dilemmas and cliche relationships, and Branagh's direction is unremarkable.

Just as Rudner's character, the newcomer in a close-knit aggregation, feels excluded, audiences will feel equally alienated. These people are simply not likable. Now and then, a nice comic moment or tidy little performance is turned in, but with friends like these. . . .

LOS ANGELES -- Best known for her solo stand-up routine, comedian Rita Rudner becomes a team player in Peter's Friends, joining with friends and family to make a movie about, well, friends and family.

Ms. Rudner, who co-wrote the movie with husband Martin Bergman, says the pair drew heavily on their own lives as well as friends' experiences to pen the comedy about six college chums reuniting for a New Year's Eve celebration at an English country estate.

The original idea sprang from British comedy producer Bergman's involvement in an amateur drama troupe, The Footlights Review, during his years at Cambridge University, says Ms. Rudner.

"Whenever we go back to England he's still friends with all these people,' explains Ms. Rudner, a Miami native who switched from hoofing on Broadway to the stand-up mike in 1980. "We decided to make a movie about the relationships we forge at that point in life, when you first leave home and are thrown in with a group of strangers.'

Ms. Rudner says they particularly wanted to explore themes that relate to real life, like insecurity, addiction, infidelity, the pressures of parenthood and keeping romance alive.

"I love escapist movies, but usually people don't have a strange killer stalking them. They're not on boats that get hijacked,' she says.

Instead, in the world of Peter's Friends, we have ex-lovers stalking us and watch dumbfounded as our lives are hijacked by our nearest and dearest.

The Peter of the movie's title is the ne'er-do-well heir to an enormous country estate. Faced with the prospect of selling or renting out the white elephant, true to form he decides instead to throw a party and think about it later. Summoned from around the world are a group of college chums, principally joined together, as we see in an opening flashback sequence, by the mutual embarrassment of having performed together in a lame musical revue. (The ghastly flashback number, featuring Charli e Chaplin look-alikes in drag, was culled from Mr. Bergman's actual Footlights repertoire.)

Ms. Rudner has cast herself as an overbearing, fitness-obsessed American sitcom star who can't leave home without a complete set of barbells and designer jogging outfits, and enough war paint and hair extensions to supply a regiment of runway models.

"I just wanted to do something that was fun and totally different from my stage persona,' says Ms. Rudner, whose award-winning comedy specials have appeared on HBO and A&E. "I also didn't want to do anything that had an English accent. I didn't want to do an English accent in the middle of England with English people. Any accent I try sounds Yiddish anyway.

"Mostly (the character) is drawn from people I see every day. Every time I think I've overdressed I just go down to Rodeo Drive. And these people aren't even out for dinner, they're just out to shop for socks or something and they're dressed to the teeth!'

When pressed, however, Ms. Rudner admits that not all of her character's foibles are fictive. For example, like the sitcom star, Ms. Rudner is obsessed with not having cream in her food. And then there's the little business of the trans-Atlantic barbells.

"When Martin and I first got together, before he changed me and made me into a person with no muscle tone -- I used to be a dancer. Whenever I used to go to England I would have a fit that there were no gyms, no swimming pools, no places for me to work out,' she says. "We kind of took that aspect of the character from my first reaction to England. I used to try to pack everything.'

The movie is directed by Kenneth Branagh (Henry V, Dead Again) who also plays Ms. Rudner's long-suffering husband. Mr. Branagh's wife, Emma Thompson, plays a mousy eccentric. The ensemble cast also features Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton, Phyllida Law, Tony Slattery and Alphonsia Emmanuel.

Although critics will naturally draw comparisons between Peter's Friends and that seminal 1983 reunion movie, Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill, Ms. Rudner insists, somewhat defensively, that her work stands on its own merits.

"I guess that means you can't make another reunion movie,' Ms. Rudner bristles when the subject is broached. "This movie is a different style, different characters. Basically, we see it more like a Woody Allen movie. We love movies like Hannah and Her Sisters and Annie Hall. We wanted to write a movie that was contained in a household with lots of different relationships going on under one roof.'

The making of the movie was a reunion in its own right. Ms. Thompson was a classmate of Mr. Bergman's in college. Mr. Bergman and Ms. Rudner count Ms. Thompson and Mr. Branagh among their closest friends, as they do Mr. Fry, Mr. Laurie and Ms. Staunton.

"We wrote most of the parts for people we knew,' says Ms. Rudner. "It was excellent for us. We could get the scripts to the people we wanted and we could get it done in a hurry. It wasn't like we had to hire a casting director and go to every actor in London. We only had to audition for two or three of the parts.'

Distributed by BPI Communications

IN some wise-guy circles, "Peter's Friends" is known as "The Big British Chill."

I liked ours better.

Still, "Peter's Friends" has some funny lines and good performances. You could do worse.

Its origins are trans-Atlantic. It was directed by Kenneth Branagh, of "Dead Again and Henry V" fame. It was written by a husband-wife team, Martin Bergman and Rita Rudner, he British, she American and a stand-up comic ubiquitous on the premium cable channels.

Rudner plays the sole American character in the ensemble cast, a sitcom actress who has married into into the "Big Brit Chill" group.

Peter (Stephen Fry), the organizer of the group's reunion, calls his friends to his country home for a New Year's Eve party to mark the 10th anniversary of the group's defining moment: the worst moment of their lives, as it turned out, when they gave a performance of their little university-revue cabaret act to a bunch of rich stuffed shirts who were not amused.

The college chums are:

Andrew (Branagh), a writer who has sold out, gone to Hollywood and writes for Carol's hit situation comedy. He also married her.

Maggie (Emma Thompson), a little-brown-wren type, now an editor of self-help books, who intends to put one of the book's how-to-find-a-mate scenarios into play on her host during her house-guesting.

Sarah (Alphonsia Emmanuel), a theatrical costume designer prone to sleeping with anything male in sight. True to type, she brings with her a handsome but crass actor, Brian (Tony Slattery), who says he's going to leave his wife and child for her.

Roger (Hugh Laurie) and Mary (Imelda Staunton), who are married to each other. He writes TV commercial jingles, and she obsesses about the health and safety of her young son, whose twin recently died.

As for Peter . . . Well, Peter hasn't done much over the past 10 years. He was wealthy, and he's now wealthier. His father recently died, and he inherited everything.

The narrative is pointed toward the moment when Peter tells his friends the actual reason, beyond reunion, for calling them together (and it poops the party, believe me).

This is more a template than a plot, but no one will complain if the details that the template supports are good.

I liked the show-biz-snappy patter and those crisp Brit performances, especially Fry's kindly Peter and Thompson's sweetly nutty Maggie.

What I didn't like was the reverse engineering.

It feels as though Bergman and Rudner wrote down a list of ways to feel -- bitter, lonely, grief-stricken -- and came up with character types to fit the adjectives. As a result, the characterizations seldom have more than one adjective's depth.

Since the film wasn't designed to accumulate, it builds up no substructure of goodwill upon which Branagh may fall back when a joke and formula pathos don't work. If a joke goes wrong here, we're no more willing to cut the filmmakers slack than we do when we watch a sitcom.

You may wish to discount my disappointment. With the number of characters involved and the various permutations of relationships, this is a cafeteria of a film.

The filmmakers have tossed cards into the air. You'll enjoy the film if enough individual cards come down within your reach.

PETER'S FRIENDS

Kenneth Branagh, Rita Rudner, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Alphonsia Emmanuel

A British comedy-drama about a group of 30ish old friends gathering in England to celebrate their misspent youths, this often seems to be merely The Big Chill with an English accent and a penchant for the maudlin. But it has a unique warmth and a sly, insinuating (and, typical of the British, sex-obsessed) wit all its own. It is a drawing-room comedy for the 1990s.

Branagh, who directed, plays an expatriate playwright who has emigrated to the U.S. to become a TV writer. Branagh's real-life wife, Thompson, is a repressed self-help-book author whose search for an outlet for her sexuality provides a serious subplot. Emmanuel, meanwhile, is an actress whose libido is only too fulfilled.

Rudner, the ebullient stand-up comic, wrote the script with her husband, Martin Bergman; she plays a truncated part as a spoiled TV star (Branagh's wife) whose California preoccupations (weight and shopping) would make the film seem anti-American if Rudner weren't herself a Yank.

Fry, the reunion's host, is the pivotal character, a sexually ambiguous, to-the-manor-bound twit whose relationships with all his friends are defined by his timidity and their adventuresome, sometimes rapacious spirit.

Laurie and Imelda Staunton are a troubled couple preoccupied with the health of their son. Their tribulations are only a part of the unhappy undertone, though. This film is as likely to leave you sniffling as laughing, but you'll grin through the tears. (Unrated)

RALPH NOVAK
COPYRIGHT 1993 Time, Inc.