Movie Review: Now And Then (1995)

Genre: Coming-Of-Age Dramedy  

Director: Lesli Linka Glatter  

Starring: Demi Moore, Melanie Griffith, Rosie O'Donnell, Rita Wilson, Thora Birch, Christina Ricci  

Running Time: 100 minutes  

Synopsis: Now in their 30s, four friends from childhood re-convene in their small hometown of Shelby, Indiana. Chrissy (Rita Wilson) still lives in her parents' house and is about to give birth. Roberta (Rosie O'Donnell) is a doctor, Teeny (Melanie Griffiths) a Hollywood star, and Samantha (Demi Moore) an author. In a long flashback they reminisce about the summer of 1970, when as pre-teens they became aware of life's complexities, including imperfect parents, societal ills, and burgeoning sexuality.

What Works Well: This girl's equivalent of Stand By Me explores a range of pre-adult experiences ranging from mundane misadventures (the girls have a running feud with a group of boys) to painful awakenings into the adult world. The four young actresses (Ashleigh Aston Moore as Chrissy, Christina Ricci as Roberta, Thora Birch as Teeny, and Gaby Hoffman as Samantha) capably carry the acting load and tease out subtle bonds within the already sturdy quadrangle: Chrissy and Roberta are best friends and as adults remained in Shelby, while Teeny and Samantha share a more adventurous spirit and moved far from their hometown. Brendan Fraser adds era context as a Vietnam War veteran, and Walter Sparrow makes an impact as "Crazy" Pete.

What Does Not Work As Well: The adult Samantha over-narrates with saturated sullenness, and the book-end scenes featuring the grown women appear slapped-on to add marketable star names. Moore, Griffith, and O'Donnell barely mask their disinterest, while Wilson embraces cartoon representations. In the flashback, excessive time is occupied with a side-story involving seances and a community tragedy from years past, while a near-death encounter involving an over-sized catch basin is dramatic overkill.

Key Quote:

Young Roberta: You can't get pregnant from French-kissing!

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Movie Review: Beautiful Girls (1996)

A character-rich study with a focus on growing up and finding the right relationship, Beautiful Girls is a winsome slice of small-town life.

Sensitive piano player Willie (Timothy Hutton), now based in New York City, return to his snowy small hometown of Knights Ridge, Massachusetts, for a high school reunion. Willie reconnects with his old school buddies who never left town, and are now all in their late twenties: Tommy (Matt Dillon), Mo (Noah Emmerich), Paul (Michael Rapaport), Kev (Max Perlich), and Stanley (Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Tommy ("Birdman") was the school football star, and he never grew up. Now running a small snowplow company, Tommy is seeing Sharon (Mira Sorvino), but carrying on an affair with his married high school sweetheart Derian (Lauren Holly). Mo is happily married to Sarah (Anne Bobby), and is the most settled of the group. Paul is also a snowplower and has not moved beyond the supermodel pin-up phase nor learned to deal with real women. He is having trouble letting go of former girlfriend Jan (Martha Plimpton), who is now dating someone else. Kev is Tommy's sidekick, while hardworking Stanley ("Stinky") is operating his own restaurant.

As Willie catches up with the lives and loves of his buddies, he meets and befriends his neighbours' daughter, precocious 13 year old Marty (Natalie Portman), and contemplates his future with long-term New York girlfriend Tracy (Annabeth Gish). The town's wisemouth hairdresser Gina (Rosie O'Donnell) dishes out advice to anyone who listens, while Stinky's stunningly beautiful cousin Andera (Uma Thurman) arrives in town, and causes a stir among the guys.

A film with no heroes, villains, central romance, irony or glib humour, Beautiful Girls is simply about people trying to assemble the puzzle of adulthood. With echoes of Mystic Pizza (1988), Beautiful Girls excels at creating rounded, flawed characters worth caring about. Director Ted Demme, working from a fine script by Scott Rosenberg, quickly establishes the guys, the girls and the complex dynamics between them, bringing the tapestry of life to the quiet streets of Knights Ridge.

The film glides easily between the no less than 16 friends and relatives who make up Willie's ecosystem, and just as Willie drops into the lives-in-progress of his friends, the film catches all the relevant stories mid-stream. Paul is struggling to cope with Jan leaving him behind, Tommy is caught between the devoted Sharon and the lusty Derian, while Mo and Stinky are just getting on with lives that have traded glamour for maturity.

The catalysts are the outsiders and newcomers. Young Marty brings an inquisitive mind and an open heart into Willie's life, their chats developing into a credible crush that is intellectually impossible but emotionally real. Andera, with her big-city outlook and no nostalgic attachments to Knights Ridge, sees things for what they are, piercing through Paul's amateur attempts at making Jan jealous, immediately reading Tommy's immaturity, and finding in Willie the one man worth nudging towards the right side of the commitment fence.

To drive the narrative forward, Rosenberg does allow the members of Willie's circle to quickly open up and talk through their issues. Guys like Tommy and Paul may be stuck in teenage mode and unable to grapple with what it means to be men, but they are nevertheless not shy about talking through their thoughts, emotions and viewpoints. This ability to share is at odds with the often emotionally stilted reality of relatively immature guys.

The performances from the ensemble cast strike a perfect tone, the characters all translated into real people navigating the choppy waters of small town living and mismanaged expectations. Hutton, Dillon, and Rapaport form the strongest bond at the heart of the many friendships, but Natalie Portman, all of 14 during filming, steals the movie with a stunning performance, finding the thin edge between child and adult, smart but not sassy, sensitive but not sentimental. Her relationship with Willie becomes a trigger for a better future: he sees himself through her eyes as a man worth living up to the name. The most beautiful girl, as it turns out, is also the youngest, and her beauty radiates through her belief in tomorrow's possibilities.

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Movie Review: Sleepless In Seattle (1993)

An unashamedly syrupy romance, Sleepless In Seattle concocts a relationship between America's favourite perky sweetheart Meg Ryan and America's favourite sensitive everyman Tom Hanks. The film's dedication to the magic of love is strong enough to withstand the nuisance of the two leads living separate lives, a continent apart.

Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is a widower struggling to get over the loss of his wife. With his eight year old son Jonah (Ross Malinger) in tow, Sam relocates to Seattle to try and start a new life, but 18 months later, his is still in the emotional doldrums. Desperate, Jonah calls-in to the national radio show of celebrity shrink Dr. Martha. Eventually Sam gets on the phone and Dr. Martha cajoles him into expressing his emotions to the whole country. Thousands of women listeners are touched by his story.

Among the listeners is Baltimore-based reporter Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), engaged to be married to the loving but insufferably predictable Walter (Bill Pullman). Annie finds herself inexplicably drawn to Sam, and begins to seriously doubt her relationship with Walter. Sam embarks on a tentative relationship with co-worker Victoria (Barbara Garrick), while unsanctioned interventions by Annie's friend Becky (Rosie O'Donnell) and Jonah attempt to prod Sam and Annie towards their joint destiny.

The magic of true love as imagined by women is the unshakable core of Sleepless In Seattle, and director Nora Ephron (who also co-wrote the script) in unapologetic in layering on the tear-inducing liquid sugar early and often in large, gooey spoonfuls. The soundtrack is a succession of classic romantic favourites including the likes of As Time Goes By, A Kiss To Build A Dream On and When I Fall In Love, and the movie borrows its themes from the 1957 Cary Grant - Deborah Kerr classic An Affair To Remember, which is only considered one of the most romantic films of all time.

Two of the hottest stars of the time, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan make for an appealing would-be couple, despite sharing precious little screen time with each other. Hanks portrays Sam as the perfect catch for any woman, as dictated by the script, while being genuinely affecting as a heartbroken husband and father struggling to overcome the loss of the true love of his life. Ryan regularly risks overplaying her cute America's sweetheart persona, often betraying an actress ever so slightly over-confident about how much the audience loves her. She makes up for it with some terrific reaction scenes where she commandingly reveals the stripped away essence of a woman realizing that true romance is both currently missing in her life and calling to her from the other end of the radio.

The supporting cast fulfils its mandate in contributing to the magic-of-true-love theme, with the consequence that some characters become so much cannon fodder as they stand in the way of the central relationship. Bill Pullman's Walter is set up as the sacrificial lamb, his character burdened with so many flaws that ditching him is merciful relief. Similarly, Victoria is saddled with a hyena laugh that, while comic, dooms her from behind the starting gate. Rosie O'Donnell and Rob Reiner get small roles as the token witty friends. Young Ross Malinger joined the long list of child actors whose debuts coincided with their best performance, and he was unfortunately unable to translate his excellent portrayal as Jonah into a meaningful career.

If the script replaces wit and realism with the quest for perfect love, it does leave room for a thread of humour. A satirical manly recounting of the tragic ending of The Dirty Dozen as an antidote to all the gushing estrogen hits the comic bulls-eye. Ephron also treads softly in a variety of locations, with Chicago, New York and Baltimore as well as Seattle all playing their role in the transcontinental love flow.

What Sleepless In Seattle lacks in subtlety, it makes up in honest intentions. This is a story of love at its most enchanting, the fairy with the magic wand perhaps not visible but very much in evidence.

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