NOW & THEN
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1995) **1/2 (out of four)
I like a good chick movie every now and then, especially if the chicks are of the attractive variety. That factor doesn't quite apply to NOW AND THEN, where the stars are four twelve-year-old girls -- Gaby Hoffman, Thora Birch, Ashleigh Aston Moore and Internet favorite Christina Ricci. I don't know if being the teenage girl most-lusted after by pedophiles is worth putting on your resume, but if you are one of the pedophiles, you'll head for the video store the second I tell you NOW AND THEN features a lingering closeup of Ricci in a training bra. The rest of you will probably head for the bathroom after reading that.
NOW AND THEN also features the adult counterparts of the four girls -- Demi Moore, Melanie Griffith, Rosie O'Donnell and Rita Wilson. (Another note for you Internet pedophiles, this film tells us Christina Ricci will look like Rosie O'Donnell in twenty years. I'm sure that's a real ego-booster for the girl...) The four women reconverge in their hometown after being called there by Wilson, who reminds them of the pact they made as children to be there for d a problem arise.
The four women only appear in the first ten and last ten minutes of the movie, with the main plot revolving around four girls' coming-of-age story. So it's a cross between IT and STAND BY ME (and it even has a subplot about a dead body), but it could never have come from the mind of Stephen King... barring an overdose of estrogen pills, of course. It could also be a cross between the nostalgic childhood feel of 1993's THE SANDLOT and the women-sticking-together ethic of STEEL MAGNOLIAS.
Whichever of the four films most inspired NOW AND THEN, it comes off as an entertaining movie most of the time. The film is at its best when focusing on the curiosities of youth -- sex and seances, mostly. Ricci is a tomboy who has to tape down her overly-developing chest and finally learns the reality behind her mother's death. Birch has dreams of Hollywood. Hoffman's parents are divorcing. Moore is fat. And so on.
And we get the obligatory boys-with-cooties and truth-or- dare scenes here, along with the girls' odyssey of trying to learn the mystery of a cemetary tombstone reading "Dear Johnny." (I won't give away the mystery, except to say Dear Abby goes to great lengths to get rid of her competition.) They also learn to trust each other and distrust their parents. Interestingly enough, it's adults like Vietnam vet Brendan Fraser and waitress/psychic Janeane Garafolo who tell them not to trust adults.
Since at least 80% of NOW AND THEN is spent in the past, the scenes at the beginning and end of the grown-up friends reuniting are ultimately expendable. The real attraction of the movie (especially for those Internet pedophiles) is those pubescent girls. I suspect the only reason Demi, Melanie, Rosie and Rita make appearances at all is for the sake of name recognition. They're prominently displayed on the front along with their twelve-year-old counterparts, making it seem like an equal-time story between past and present, now and then. But the movie should have just been called THEN. Forget about now. Adults aren't to be trusted.
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