SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR is an old fashioned comedy/drama that takes turns being contrived, enjoyable, sweet and annoying.
Alan Alda is George, a business man in the mid 1950's that meets Doris (Ellen Burstyn) across a restaurant one evening at a beautiful bed & breakfast in Northern California.
They are both married, but quickly fall into laughter, romance and bed together over the opening credits. With all the candlelight, the soft focus, the ocean crashing outside and Johnny Mathis singing "The Last Time I Felt Like This", who could you NOT fall in love?!
But soon, the dialogue starts and never seems to end. Maybe its because this was originally a stage play, or the decades old setting, but George & Doris do a LOT of talking.
That can be fun, but like some of Neil Simon's plays, people don't talk like these people do. It's all a bit too mannered, with the retorts and the comebacks all a bit too quick.
I'm normally a big fan of Alda. His work on M*A*S*H is some of the best TV acting of the century, but he is in Super-Jack-Lemmon mode here, all jitters, shouting, big mannerisms and exaggerated reactions. It throws a lot of the film off.
So, our couple decides to meet every year at the same spot, with the film revisiting them at the Inn every five years or so.
It gives the writers a chance to bring them through the social turmoil of the sixties and seventies, with Doris and George often taking different sides of social issues and dragging us along with them.
We also get to know their spouses through the stories they tell each year, with the film cleverly making us like these folks as we celebrate their yearly infidelity with them (not easy to do!).
Burstyn is consistently good, changing as a character very believably. Alda is less effective, overacting his way through each of their yearly visits.
Same Time, Next Year hasn't held up very well over the years, but damned if that Johnny Mathis song still set the tone perfectly.
We'll give it a C.
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