romy
and michele's
high school reunion |
director
David Mirkin
screenwriter
Robin Schiff
based on
her play
The Ladies Room
producer
Laurence Mark
cinematographer
Reynaldo Villalobos
music
Steve Bartek
editor
David Finfer
cast
Mira Sorvino (Romy White)
Lisa Kudrow (Michele Weinberger)
Janeane Garofalo (Heather Mooney)
Alan Cumming (Sandy Frink)
Julia Campbell (Christy Masters)
Mia Cottet (Cheryl)
Kristin Bauer (Kelly)
Elaine Hendrix (Lisa Luder)
Vincent Ventresca (Billy)
Camryn Manheim (Toby Walters)
Justin Theroux (Cowboy)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 92m
u.s.
release: 4/25/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
|
I
went to Romy and Michele's High School Reunion hoping
for a tasty, colorful wad of bubble gum, and that's exactly what
it is. The movie is a celebration of its two gently daffy heroines,
Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow), both closing in
on thirty without any hint of growing up. Best friends since
forever, they live together in their cluttered L.A. apartment,
watching Pretty Woman (which they mock and cherish) and
hitting dance clubs. They seem to have no other friends and no
future. Done another way, the movie could be very depressing.
Instead it's, like, really fun. Romy and Michele gets
a lot of mileage out of the one event that can strike terror
in the most jaded Gen-X heart. The ten-year reunion demands that
you be well on your way down the path to capitalist glory: house
'n' spouse, good job, maybe a rugrat or two. It's the Show and
Tell from hell. Romy and Michele, staring their ten-year
reunion in the face, realize they have very little to show or
tell. So they fake it.
The clueless duo recast themselves as powerful career women --
self-made tycoons who allegedly invented Post-Its. And it's a
tribute to the light-as-air charisma of Sorvino and especially
Kudrow that we really feel a loss when they feign buttoned-down
professionalism. We like them because -- like Alicia Silverstone
in Clueless -- they're
so completely who they are: not dummies, but postfeminist goddesses
without a whole lot on their minds besides having fun, looking
good, and (most important) being kind. When they fake being driven
careerists out of the '80s, we experience it as a violation.
Now and then, the movie plays like a cheerful vindication of
everyone who was a misfit in high school. Yes, the super-popular
cheerleader wound up marrying the jock stud, but look at them
ten years later, stuck in an empty marriage; she's perpetually
knocked up, he's an alcoholic skirt-chaser. As the movie demonstrates,
the problem with peaking in high school is ... well, you peaked
in high school. Romy and Michele's aimlessness seems like a bright
future in comparison.
The dorks and wimps survived and then some. One geek (Alan Cummings,
from Emma) became Bill Gates, while the bitter misanthrope
(Janeane Garofalo, boldly tossing out the nice-girl goodwill
she built in The Truth About Cats
and Dogs) made her bread marketing fast-burning cigarettes
for women on the move. Living well is the best revenge -- who
needs Heathers? For most of us who existed in the gray
area between Heather and Carrie White, Romy and Michele's triumph
is our triumph.
But enough deep-dish analysis. The movie succeeds by being goofy
and disposable (and, in the case of an overextended dream sequence,
very disposable -- funny at first, but goes on well past
its purpose). Sorvino scores laughs with that odd is-she-kidding
voice of hers (it makes half her lines sound like put-ons); Kudrow
may be repeating her space-girl shtick from Friends, but
she's great at it. And I haven't even mentioned the blissfully
absurd dance number, a tiny classic all by itself. This is a
warm pink bubble bath of a movie -- poppy, soothing, and satisfying
on a very basic level. |