Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Wuchak Released in 1980, "A Small Circle of Friends" is a drama about three friends at Harvard & Radcliffe College during the turbulent years 1967-1971. The protagonists are played by Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker. John Friedrich and Shelley Long are on hand as peripheral students. This is a good realistic drama about life at college during the late 60s & early 70s in America. The movie showcases the political and social craziness of those times and how it changed the students, for better or worse. It's akin to 2000's underrated "The 70s" but maybe a notch better. There are several highlights and even glimpses of greatness, like "The Star-Spangled Banner" being sung by an African-America cook from the university while sitting at a bar, a few curvy cuties, a pre-Cheers Shelley Long, a hilarious stage sequence, the absurd Vietnam draft lottery, and an unexpectedly shocking climax. There are also a couple of great songs from the era, like the Stones' "Street Fighting Man," but there should've been more instead of overdoing the sappy "Theme for the Masses." I should warn that there's one element in the last act that's just gross, but it happened then and now. As solid as "A Small Circle of Friends" is, it's thoroughly obscure; somehow it fell through the cracks when it was released. The film runs 113 minutes and was shot entirely in Massachusetts (Cambridge, Bridgewater & Groton). It was directed by Rob Cohen and written by Ezra Sacks. GRADE: B+

talicea In spite of the new (2005) terrible film STEALTH directed by the same director of this film....I give this film TWO THUMBS UP.This movie rang a bell during the military draft lottery scene; my number was 316, NOT ELIGIBLE for military service. A guy I knew then got #1: Sept 14.The very last scene is great when two good old friends find themselves years after college, each with a profession and one with a divorce already under her belt and they decide to "see what happens" now.Very rational and smart decision.

rgaccas True classic bringing our college life in the 60's to the screen, nostalgic and accurate, and deeply appreciated. I know of no other film which makes it possible for the x-generation to get a glimpse of how we baby boomers emerged.

petershelleyau The most resonant element of director Rob Cohen's film is the music score by Jim Steinman, which includes the melody that was later recorded as Total Eclipse of the Heart. Otherwise this tale of a supposed menage-a-tois between Harvard university students Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker is as dramatic as the cartoon opening and closing sketches. The screenplay by Ezra Sacks attempts coverage of the Vietnam era from 1967 to 1971 from a student activist point of view, but the tri-romance hardly seems from the same era since it isn't until towards the end that there is any suggestion of bigamy. There is also even less suggestion of homosexuality interest between Davis and Parker. When the 3 finally go into the same bedroom, the camera is left outside and the door closed. Their lack of involvement in activism is paralled with the radicalisation of a Texan boy scout who comes to Harvard at the same time and ends up a terrorist, and highlighted by a campus riot that comes out of nowhere. Even the Vietnam connection as a comment on the relationship and vice versa doesn't work. Sacks opens with Parker reuniting with Allen in "the present"before we start flashbacking to 1967, with Davis' absence pre-empting the outcome, and Cohen supplies matching love scene montages. Davis' has steam so apparently is more erotic and ends abruptly, whilst Parker's is set to Chances Are and ends more positively. Sacks has 2 lines I liked - a technique of breaking into a glass window "I saw it on I Spy or was it The Untouchables", though Cohen repeats it, and "Only men would come up with a draft lottery using balls". Utilising period TV and photographic images - the assassinations of the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King - and a series of bad wigs, the only sense of reality and truth comes in a moment when someone sings the Star Spangled Banner to TV closure. Davis has the impossible charming/wild man role, not helped by his looking older than the others, and the best he can do is stare child-like for vulnerability. Allen doesn't have a strong screen persona so it's easy to think one is watching Amy Irving or Janet Margolin or Brooke Adams. Of the 3, Parker probably comes off best even when saddled with a Colonel Sanders look. His character's basic dullness is probably the reason he needs to be reunited with Allen. Even when the competition is Davis, anyone that prefers to experiment with rats rather than go to an Ingmar Bergman film is definitely worth reconsidering as a partner. Watch for Shelley Long as a photographer, and Daniel Stern, billed as Dan.