Touches You

Best movie of this year hands down!

A lot of fun.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Witty and hilarious. This movie was a complete breath of fresh air. I cannot understand the bad reviews, nor can I understand why people are comparing it to " The Big Chill" ( another great film but different). This movie is cute and hilarious in parts although scenes towards the end started to get a little depressing. I did feel the ending was a bit of a let down as it started so well. To me the highlight was Rita Rudner who is hilarious as the American Joan Collins type, soap star and steals the show. I truly wanted to see more of her. Fully recommend this movie

If you've ever hosted or been invited to a reunion you'll recognise a lot in this film. The excited expectations of catching up with people you were great friends with many years ago, followed by the reality that as years go by, life has changed for all of you. You want everyone to be the same, but they're not.Peter invites a group of his old university friends to a party at his recently deceased father's mansion. The friends have not all seen each other since they graduated in 1982, although have individually stayed in touch during that time.As with this type of film things don't go according to the host's plans as the lives of each member of the group are revealed - Roger and Mary have suffered an enormous tragedy, losing a baby to cot death, and as a couple are not dealing with how it has affected their relationship. Andrew has married his sitcom star wife Carol and lives in California, their marriage isn't a happy one in-spite of wealth and success. Maggie is a lonely spinster in love with Peter who doesn't reciprocate. Sarah basically beds unavailable men and brings her latest one, Brian, to the party. When his life becomes all too real (he's married with a child), the relationship falls apart and he goes back home.The only person who you think doesn't have events going on in their life seems to be Peter, only revealing to the rest of the group, and us the audience that he his HIV positive. The way this announcement is dealt with in the film really dates it. In 1992 HIV was still a big and controversial issue, and was in many ways still considered a death sentence. If the film was made and set now in 2017 Peter's announcement would have basically 0 shock value. The script isn't laugh out loud funny but is witty in that way British comedy films usually are - a mix of self-deprecation, sarcasm and one liners. I first watched this way back in about 1993 and at that time I considered it to be one of my favourite films. I was 15 at the time, and wasn't really into a lot of the films my peers were into!25 years after it was made I still really enjoy Peter's Friends although now I can see some flaws - it is a bit of a "love-in" of Kenneth Branagh's friends, a bit too sentimental and mushy in places, as well as slightly slow in the middle. A good, but not exceptional British comedy.

This film is an apt demonstration of the old saying that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; in this case, any number of fine actors cannot rise above an inferior script. The performances seemed strained, over-the-top, and built on stereotypes, hence the two-dimensional quality of the characterizations. So frustrating to see fine actors like Thompson, Laurie, Staunton, and Branagh have so few places to go. Stephen Fry turns in the best work, because his role at least bears some mystery and nuance. It was impossible to believe that the characters who were cast as couples had ever been attracted to each other, much less married. The contemporary music seems manipulative, intrusive, and heavy handed--not much subtlety. Not much moral ambiguity, either: it's clear which characters we're supposed to love and which we're supposed to hate. Given these problems, as well as the sentimental and hackneyed ending (complete with a freeze frame of forced gaiety and laughter), it's remarkable that this film has been compared favorably to The Big Chill and The Return of the Secaucus Seven--it doesn't even come close.

It wasn't a bad movie, but with a lesser cast it would have been. It kept flirting with amateurish melodrama and the occasional attempt at broad comedy while still wanting to be a witty comedy, yet somehow the performances kept it together (except for one highly over-acted scene from Branagh). Knowing we were basically watching "Kenneth's Friends" with various points of similarity to the actors' real lives put an unfortunate air of "vanity project" about the movie.How ironic that comments here have commented on the extreme Britishness of the writing, when at least one of the two screenwriters was American. Rita Rudner slipped at least one line from her stand-up act into the movie (about not falling in love), and found a way for one of the characters to praise the line too.Those who are in denial about similarities to The Big Chill are just in denial. The comparison was inescapable, and I kept thinking of it as The Brit Chill while I was watching it, before I had read any reviews or IMDb comments. Kevin Costner didn't show up as the dead guy that prompted the reunion in this one either! :-)