I had the pleasure of watching Romy and Michelle’s
High School Reunion over the weekend. It reminded me
of so many things-high school, reunions, not wanting
to remember high school! And as the two of them were
sitting looking through their year book it made me
think of when I saw this movie. In 1997 I was in grad
school in Chicago and my best friend wanted to see
this movie. I thought he’d gone crazy or was high on
some pizza that had bad mushrooms! But we went and it
was a hilarious movie.
Romy and Michelle are from Tucson, Arizona-played by
Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow. They felt that living in
Tucson was the height of boredom and that in high
school they were surrounded by low-lifes, geeks and
complete dorks. Isn’t that the definition of high
school though? They’ve moved to LA and are living the
party life they always wanted. They’re young and hot,
single and available-only problem is that no one wants
them! They find out about their ten year high school
reunion and decide to go so they can through their
Living-in-LA life in everyone’s faces. Thus presents
their next problem-they don’t have a life anyone wants
either. They decide to find great jobs and even better
boyfriends so they can wow ‘em at the reunion.
Here’s the next problem-seeing a pattern here? They
can’t find great jobs or any boyfriends. Romy is a
cashier and Michelle has no job what-so-ever. So they
decide to make up their own great life to impress
everyone. Think there could be a problem with this
idea? They get to the reunion dressed for success and
their big story gets blown by one of their
classmates-Heather Mooney played by Janeane Garofalo.
Garofalo plays an excellent role as an over achieving
intellect who never got the attention she craved from
the boy she was in love with during high school-and
ten years later she’s still repressing her anger-sort
of-and displacing a lot more of her anger!
Over all the movie is very funny and it has some great
music in it from the 1980’s. It’s fun to see what type
of fashion that Romy and Michelle will come up with as
well as amusing to see how they looked down on others
just as others looked down on them. Though that
doesn’t’ come to realization until the end of the
movie for Michelle where she says to any who will
listen, “I bet that everyone made someone’s life hell
in high school.”
This of course made me wonder who I impacted when I
was in high school, and I can’t imagine anyone caring
about what I did in high school. I don’t keep in touch
with any of my high school classmates and have never
gone to a reunion-my ten year reunion was a few years
ago now. But if you went to school anytime in the 80’s
and want a good movie to reminisce and laugh at, then
by all means go rent Romy and Michelle’s High School
Reunion.
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120032/
Monday, October 29, 2007
