Blonde on Blonde
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997): 7 out of 10: Good natured comedy starring Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow as two outcasts in High School who decide to go to their ten-year reunion and pretend they were successful women who invented Post-it Notes. This prevarication does not go as planned.
The Good
The Good: There are some excellent lessons in this film. Stop worrying about what other people think and just enjoy yourself is the best one. The film itself takes the high road more often than not and while Kudrow and Sorvino’s characters are hardly earth-shaking representations that will change your view of life, they are pleasant enough to spend an hour or two with.
The movie also gets bonus points for having a High School prom that looks like a High School prom. I don’t know why this is such a pet peeve of mine, but it is.
The Bad
The Bad: Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is a comedy. It is more of a fun comedy than a funny comedy. There are some chuckles here and there, and the characters are well drawn, but the actual laugh quotient was, for me, at least a little on the light side.
See kids filmmakers were beating that dead horse that was 80’s nostalgia all the way back in 1997. I think a viewing today of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion suffers a smidge from the sheer volume of Stranger Things and Ready Player Ones we have nowadays celebrating that decade.
The Ugly
The Ugly: You know what dawned on me while watching this. High School reunions are dead. They are a vestigial tradition in this internet age. You don’t have to wait ten years to see if the head cheerleader got fat, just stalk her on Facebook. Did the class loser end up doing prison time or your secret crush get married? That is also a quick search away.
While Romy and Michele’s scheme would not work in the age of Google, neither would anyone else facade. We are all open books with a long photographic history. While we aim to only show what we want on social media, the truth often peeks around the corner.
Things I should have mentioned in my review but didn’t
Things I should have mentioned in my review but didn’t: There was a small kerfuffle when Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion was released because it unfairly got an R rating. Outside of a few F words, there is nothing in this movie that reads R rated material. Well, at least nothing in 1997. If it were released today, it would get an NC-17 for the excessive cigarette smoking.
Opinions I should have mentioned in my review but didn’t
Opinions I should have mentioned in my review but didn’t: Fuck Harvey Weinstein. Mira Sorvino is excellent in this movie, but after the filming wrapped, Harvey got her blackballed in the business for being difficult.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is somewhere between the horrible eighties nostalgia of 13 Going on 30 and the superior eighties nostalgia of Grosse Pointe Blank.
Come to think of it Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’s Cyndi Lauper filled soundtrack also is somewhere between the horrible kitsch of Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 13 Going on 30 and the perfection of the Pixies and The Cure and okay Motörhead in the Grosse Point Blank soundtrack.
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is a sweet and occasionally funny film with excellent performances and massive cell phones.
