Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)
(AKA: "To Thine Own Self, Be True: The Movie")
Wife saw it was available for streaming, cooed with nostalgia, and told me we should watch it together. So we did. This was my first viewing, unspoilt.
Okay, so did you like
Sixteen Candles (1984)? Then you’ll probably like this one, too. Oh sure, they were made almost a generation apart, had two different directors, and they don't share any of their cast nor plot, but they both have a
very similar 80's feel to them. Romy and Michele are two unassuming gal pals who move in together away from home after high school and have been living together (platonically, we swear! The film even makes a point of saying so!) ever since. They hold no real secrets from each other, nor from the audience. They
couldn’t hold their secrets (even if they wanted to!) because throughout the movie there isn’t a thought that comes into either one of their heads that doesn’t then immediately come out of their mouths, though this is canonically more in line with Lisa Kudrow’s oblivious Michele than Mira Sorvino’s contemplative Romy. There is also no distraction from this--no laugh track, no chorus, nothing to interfere with the audience hearing this when it happens. Anyway, Romy bumps into one of her high school classmates, Heather (Janeane Garofalo), who abrasively lets slip that their 10yr high school reunion is coming up. At home, the two go through their yearbook and, through the magic of flashbacks, reflect on just how little they've accomplished since high school and not only vow to go to the reunion, but also concoct a cockamamie, eleventh-hour plan/story to make their lives sound more impressive for when they have to face their classmates. Cue the hijinx.
Now I’m not a fan of what I like to call
“Ben Stiller-type” humor, where a protagonist is repeatedly put through painfully embarrassing situations for the amusement of the viewers, so I admit I spent a LOT of the time watching this movie wincing and/or looking away, though it was not so much that it kept me from watching the whole thing. R&M embark on a crash diet/exercise binge, finagle a cool car, dump their usual bohemian outfits for something more formal and try to pass themselves off as wildly successful urban professionals. The stress of maintaining this façade is too much, however, and causes a rift between the two. We get to see a dream sequence (which btw has some
surprisingly impressive prosthetic work AND many cleverly hidden callbacks to the earlier yearbook sequences) where we see what a potential future might look like were they to go (and stay) their separate ways. Then we exit the dream sequence to see how the reunion
actually starts to play out for our (recently split) duo. Spoiler alert: not well. Jeneane Garofalo shows up again and steals the scene, and in the wake of this, our individual heroines become easy prey for the vicious prom queen and her entourage. Whatever shall they do?
Well, because this movie follows an 80's formula, of
course the answer is that they team back up, do a quick wardrobe change back into their bohemian roots, and then stride back in and tell that bitch off to her face in front of everybody. That'll show her! Everyone else (including Jeneane Garofalo and even one of the prom queen's entourage!) is impressed by this, and then, to cap it all off, Prince Charming (Alan Cumming as the geek-turned-millionaire-hottie) swoops in to sweep Michele (and, by extension, Romy) off her (their) feet and legitimize their
reunion (intentional double entendre in the movie title--oh,
snap!) with a convoluted dance number that would've been right at home in yet another dream sequence. Also the prom queen gets a heaping helping of comeuppance blown up her skirt and the prom king gets his tables turned over for
his past transgressions. The movie closes with a little epilogue of how going to the reunion was ultimately what accomplished the goal of putting the awesome into R&M's lives. It also leaves a little bit of curious ambiguity as to what exactly happened with Prince Charming, but we do get one last appearance of Jeneane Garofalo to steal at least a
little bit more of the scenery. We never find out what happened to the cool car.
The trade-off for this was that, in return, my wife had to then watch a movie from
my teenage years --
The Secret of My Success (1987) (AKA: "The Teen Wolf of Wall Street"), which is a movie that has parts which, as
@Celt Z puts it, "did not age well." But in my opinion it's still as much of an 80's classic as was
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). But this review is not about them, it is about Romy & Michele (and Jeneane Garofalo).
--Patrick
