Beautiful Girls A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1996 By Michael Redman
*** (out of ****)
Barely scrapping by playing at a NYC piano bar, Timothy Hutton returns to his Massachusetts hometown for a couple of weeks. On the surface, he's coming home for a high school reunion, but since this is a movie, you know that he's really looking for some major life decisions.
A fairly "small" film, this sports an impressive ensemble cast including Uma Thurman, Rosie O'Donnell and a bunch of actors that you've seen before but can't quite place. Commendable jobs all around; they seem like real people.
Hutton arrives at his past and is greeted by his spirit-dead father, terminally goony brother and old high school chums. All of his old buddies are engaged in the snow removal business and most are in the midst of a relationship crisis. The perfect stuff for a comedy about people in the twenties angst.
He meets and falls for the new next door neighbor: a beautiful intelligent lively girl who is obviously taken with him. The problem is that she is only 13. Unconsummated (no, it's not _that_ type of movie), their relationship builds and neither knows what to do with it. Star-crossed lovers with no where to go.
So Hutton is gaga over a barely-teen, one of his buddies is two-timing his girlfriend with a married old flame, another's girlfriend is sleeping with a meat cutter ("and she's a vegetarian!"). Things are a mess.
Enter Uma Thurman.
The beautiful stranger in town for a few days is both a delight in the film and one of its minor downfalls. Her character is fun to watch. Even more entertaining is observing the guys falling over themselves trying to impress her. Like the Lone Ranger, before she leaves, she solves most of the problems and sets everyone onward with their lives. The ending is a bit too pat. Everything is tied up with a neat little bow.
Rosie O'Donnell is a stand-out in her limited screen time with her brash personality and "tell it like it is" pronouncements.
Structured somewhat like a "Diner, A Few Years Later", this feel-good story is a good time, but ends a little too nice.
[This appeared in the 2/22/96 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at redman@bvoice.com] -- mailto:redman@bvoice.com This week's film review at http://www.bvoice.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman
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