Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
        
Director: David Mirkin
Year: 1997
Rating: 7.5
This film is like a purring cat just sitting there waiting to be petted. It slowly, quietly in little steps worms its way into your affections and you are not sure why exactly. It is just a purring ball of fur. I sometimes think it is a shame that humans don't purr. It would make life so much simpler. I saw this years ago and thought it was good warm family entertainment, and I think I enjoyed it even more this time around. It pokes sarcastic fun at a lot of targets - pretty much everything - but with a gentle no-harm touch. No harm, no foul. What really matters here and what makes it work is the friendship between the two women who may be as dim as a London fog, but their friendship runs deep if blissfully unaware. You know they would throw themselves on a grenade for the other. Or let her friend use the last of her nail polish. You don't get a lot of female bonding in American films (in Japan it is nearly a genre) as if the same sex is always a rival but here they have no barriers in their love for one another. You wish they were lesbians and the subject is broached once when Michelle says to Romy - after being unsuccessful in their pursuit of a boyfriend - maybe we should have sex - to which the other says no way - but get back to me when I am 30.  Let's hope.



Romy (Mira Sorvino - daughter of Paul and star in Replacement Killers and Mimic) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow - famous at the time for Friends, which I admit to never having seen a full episode) went to high school together in Tucson and are living together now in Los Angeles. They are two peas in a pod but totally unaware of how little progress they have made in their lives - stuck mentally in amber - but their friendship is enough. They agree on everything - when one says, "I hate throwing up in public", the other says as if it is amazing "Me too!". When they aren't hitting the discos with their synchronized dance moves, they stay home and watch Pretty Woman and cry in the same place every time. Of course, the fact that they are boyfriend-less is absurd as both are stunning blondes - but underneath that failure I suspect is that a boyfriend would mean less time with each other - which they don't want - as much as they think they do.



Romy learns when she bumps into another high school alumni (Janeane Garofalo) that the ten-year reunion is coming up and they decide to go. But then it hits them that they have nothing to tell the others - accomplished nothing in life either professionally or socially. And still live together. They were the weird ones in high school that the mean girls made fun of. They want to show them! So, they pretend to be the inventors of Post-Its and are dressed up in professional attire. Of course, the night doesn't go as planned but they come out of it stronger than ever - side by side - in shimmering outfits. It is delightful.



The film is propelled by a great 80's soundtrack - Smithereens, Thomas Dolby, Bow Wow Wow, Robert Palmer, Devo, The Vapors, Culture Club, Cyndi Lauper and others. Reunions should be outlawed. Nothing but agita. I never went to a high school reunion - my school being in Afghanistan - but was urged by a friend to go to the 25th year reunion for college. I really didn't want to go. I hadn't been an outcast - worse - I was an Indie in a college of frats and sororities. But what I found out was that without that artificial barrier between us anymore, those I thought to be assholes were good guys with wives, children, beer bellies, crap jobs - it made me feel so much better!