Two-Timers

By Frank Rich

SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR Directed by Robert Mulligan Screenplay by Bernard Slade

One of the mysteries of the movie business is Hollywood's predilection for filming hopelessly stagebound Broadway hits. Some plays transfer easily to the screen, but those built around theatrical gimmicks invariably drop dead. Same Time, Next Year, like last year's Equus, never stood a chance as a movie: it is a one-joke, one-set, two-character sitcom that should be allowed to retire in peace to the nation's dinner theaters.

The two characters are Doris (Ellen Burstyn) and George (Alan Alda), strangers who meet at a motel and end up in bed. Though married to others, the hero and heroine continue their affair on a one-weekend-per-year basis. Luckily, Writer Bernard Slade monitors the couple at five-year rather than annual intervals.

To alter the play's design is to destroy it, so Director Robert Mulligan (Bloodbrothers) has changed virtually nothing. On Broadway, the curtain came down after each scene; in the so-called cinematic version, Same Time, Next Year is pockmarked by photomontages that allegedly set up the story's different periods. Yet Mulligan's faithfulness to the text only reveals the flaws in Same Time, Next Year.

Almost every moment in the script rings false. Why do the lovers scrupulously avoid each other 363 days a year? For no reason other than to preserve the writer's one-set gimmick. Why do the adulterers profess so much affection for each other's spouse and kids? So that old-fashioned audiences won't be too threatened by the couple's yearly transgressions. Slade is a classic practitioner of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too school of Broadway dramaturgy. He seems to be saying that a carefully circumscribed adultery will actually improve a marriage, but who in real life can control their passions as well as Doris and George? Same Time, Next Year is full of such hypocrisy; Slade's only real aim is to pander to his audience's most bankrupt fantasies.

What pushes Same Time, Next Year from silliness into bad taste is the writer's pretentiousness. Not only does he trivialize marriage and sex for cheap one-liners, but he also manages to plunder the social history of three decades. In Slade's hands, even the Viet Nam War is a cue for hokey costume gags and mechanical changes of dramatic pace. The man has no shame.

The only dignity in the film comes from Ellen Burstyn, who skillfully recreates her stage role. Playing the part originated by Charles Grodin, Alda gives a surprisingly weak performance: his usual warmth is vitiated by too many shrill farcical tantrums. Still, it's hard to blame an actor for this debacle. The only way to win playing Same Time, Next Year is to refuse to play it at all.

--Frank Rich

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