Dinner With Friends is an ambitious project. It is an interesting look as the bond of marriage, and its complexities when its all said and done. Two couples, Gabe and Karen (Quaid and McDowell) and Tom and Beth (Kinnear and Collete) have been friends forever. When Gabe and Karen invite their friends over to try a new recipe, Beth says that her and Tom are divorcing. This affects Karen a lot since she thinks of them highly. Gabe has trouble putting it into perspective and tries to remember the good times they had. Things start to change for everyone.<br /><br />Both marriages are volatile and ready to explode. Gabe and Karen's marriage always rides the thin line (She is constantly nitpicky and he backs down from deep conversation about their marriage), but Tom and Beth's marriage impolded from the outset (They were never right for each other). Deep down Gabe and Karen love each other, but Tom and Beth always saw their marriage as just another thing everyone expected him to go through.<br /><br />The message is simple: nothing is guaranteed. Marriage is always a developing process. My mom and dad have been married for years, but still learn from it. Then there are marriages I know of that falter after like thirty years because there was just was nothing left. <br /><br />The performances were good. It is what you come to expect from experienced actors. I did have some problems with Kinnear since he still looks fairly young (He's 40) and not like someone who had been married for years (the painted on gray temples didn't help much lol), but it does beat watching him in Auto Focus (solid perfomance, but not entirely factual).<br /><br />Near the end, the story begins to bottom out and fall flat. It is still an entertaining movie, but the four actors are more capable than the script allows them to be.<br /><br />