Middle-aged college professor Adam Evans (superbly played by Anthony Hopkins) has an extramarital fling with lovely, innocent coed Lindsey Rutledge (a winning performance by the delectable Bo Derek). Meanwhile, Adam's spunky wife Karyn (a marvelously sassy and spirited Shirley MacLaine) gets involved with kind, hunky young carpenter Peter Lachapelle (affable Michael Brandon). Complications ensue when Adam and Karyn decide to spend a vacation at a posh country home with their two respective lovers in tow. Director Richard Lang, working from a witty and perceptive script by Erich Segal, Ronni Kern and Fred Segal, maintains a warm, gentle tone throughout and coaxes fine acting from a bright and personable cast. Hopkins and MacLaine are terrific in the leads, with fine support from Derek, Brandon, Mary Beth Hurt as the Adams' fiery daughter Kasey, Edward Winter as Lindsey's hearty, tolerant father Steven, Paul Regina as Kasey's wacky fiancé Paul Di Lisa, and K Callan as Karyn's supportive friend Alice Bingham. Moreover, the characters are refreshingly complex and genuinely engaging, with MacLaine as Karyn in particular qualifying as the definite stand-out. Derek's slow motion tryst with Hopkins in a hot tub rates as a definite memorably steamy moment. Philip Lathrop's glossy cinematography, Henry Mancini's bouncy, melodic score, and the catchy, folksy theme song "Where Do You Catch the Bus for Tomorrow?" are all up to par as well. An amusingly quirky and occasionally quite touching delight.

This film was well written by Erich Segal of Love Story fame and by the producer, Martin Ransohoff. It is a comedic farce, but it is also touching and poignant and the characters are all quite likable and well developed. One reviewer didn't see the point to it all, but the point was that life does not end with marriage and middle age. We all have our temptations and we do the best we can with the complexities that confront us. No character in this film meant harm to any other and the result of each person's actions were not to be tidied up with easy answers. The consequences of the decisions made by the husband, the wife, the husbands girlfriend, the wife's boyfriend, and the girlfriend's father were left for us to ponder. Only the daughter, with the idealism of youth, could blissfully move on without considering what bends in the road she might face in her future. Anthony Hopkins, Shirley MacLane and the other cast members do a fine job with the material. I liked it very much and strongly recommend it.

It is sad that a film with good actor/actress as Hopkins and MacLaine did not perform well as one may expect. They were husband and wife, the first one a professor who falls in love with one of his girl- students. He simply informed his wife of this event as if nothing would happen, but this was a mistake. His wife decided to have a young lover, and all four informed went together to the mountain in holidays!!! Only in films this phenomenon can be seen. Then their daughter is also coming to the mountain with his boy-friend and his future father-in- law, who immediately falls in love with the mother of his future daughter-in-law. I think that sometimes the director wanted to make the film more comic because as a drama it was lost. The final result is not the best.

How can two future Oscar winners star in a movie and have zero chemistry? Try a hackneyed plot, pedestrian direction with self-important pretentious, a grandiose score, and pointless dialogue. The cinematography is excellent, though, and the supporting cast, especially TV-veteran Edward Winter (best performance in film) is surprisingly robust, considering the material (EXCEPT Bo Derek, or course, whose notoriety from 10 is one of the reasons this was rushed to the big screen prematurely.