The Four Seasons, review: Tina Fey's new relationship comedy is a midlife misfire
The mid-life crisis is a much-travelled road for comedy and drama. The older successful man ditching wife and family for younger, buzzier girlfriend is very familiar territory for Hollywood types: it's practically the law. So can Tina Fey and Steve Carell 's The Four Seasons (Netflix) bring something new to the party?
Sadly, no. It's 45 years since Alan Alda's original Four Seasons movie, a neat idea that framed the ups and downs of three couples, all lifelong friends, around Vivaldi's classic concerti. In a sweet nod to the past, Alda makes a brief cameo as a character's father and things have moved on in this remake, but only in baby steps. The original had three straight couples – I know, the very idea – but now we get a standard-issue gay pair completing the line-up.
You could say that shifts the dynamic, but there's so little emotional heft binding these supposedly best buddies together that sexual orientation is neither here nor there: none of these couples feel real together and, as a group, their relationship is even more pasted on, for all the forced hilarity of their communal gatherings across four separate trips.
There are echoes of White Lotus in the couples-on-holiday scenario, but we are nowhere near Jennifer Coolidge levels of hilarity. Fey, Carell and a gang including a criminally misused Colman Domingo try to mine hilarity out of the fault lines opening up in their relationships but what's presumably meant to be witty and sharp simply comes across as bitter and mean. There are few gags here, just endless bitching and backbiting.
Fey's character Kate, in a rare moment of piercing self awareness, declares, 'Maybe I'm not as charming as I think I am' – she'd be right there – but it's a rare moment of insight amid the sea of stereotypical self-absorption that The Four Seasons paddles in without ever diving truly, madly, deeply into the troubles bedevilling these charm-free chumps.
Things do look up in episode six, if you can make it that far, when Carell's cheater Nick squirms as daughter Lila unloads on her not-very-darling dad with an experimental college play performance that takes no prisoners. The retro bookcase that Nick's super-fit girlfriend Ginny had bought her as a supposed bonding gift gets smashed to bits on stage, Ginny's character brutally assassinated: 'Her personality is squats!'
If only The Four Seasons had channelled more of that revenge vibe. Instead it shot out random barbs – like, aren't today's booze-free vegan kids real party poopers? – without hitting the target.
Sadly, Lila's vitriol is soon diluted by a series of bland kiss-and-make-ups and a plot twist that is pure plot device to service a flaky message that runs something along the lines of 'make the best of what you've got because you never know how long it will last£. Or maybe it was 'with friends like these, who needs enemies?'
What a waste of the assembled talent. The real crime, though? It will be a long time before I can hear Vivaldi's music, carelessly smeared across the soundtrack, without triggering memories of this midlife misfire.
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