By Phil Curtolo
What do you get when you combine Clueless and Dumb and Dumber? To answer the question, you get director David Mirkin's new comedy Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.
Romy White (Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aprhodite) and Michele Weinberger (Lisa Kudrow, TV's Friends) have been inseparable buddies since they graduated from Sagebrush High in 1987. However, when former classmate Heather Mooney (Janeane Garafolo, The Truth About Cats and Dogs) confronts Romy about the 10 year reunion, she is astounded that she forgot.
Watching Pretty Woman for the um-teenth time, they are reminded of how they wouldn't let Julia Roberts' character shop in the expensive stores because of her appearance. Then it hits them: they are not successful. What are she and Michele going to do? Romy's instant solution is lose some weight off their already slender frames, "bag a couple of boyfriends," and get jobs. Romy says this will be easy, but Michele retorts that if it is so easy, why hadn't they already done it.
Robin Schiff's script keeps the show moving with some nice one-liners. One of the best has Romy reminiscing about her life's battle against the bathroom scales. "I was so lucky getting mono," she says looking at her thinnest high school picture. "That was like the best diet ever." The casting for the film is so perfect that one begins to suspect that the leads were chosen and then the script was developed.
Romy and Michele use their high school yearbook to discuss the caste system at their high school. The film's editor David Finfer dissolves the stills from the yearbook to live action flashbacks which makes the past come to life.
At Sagebrush High, the hierarchy consisted of the A group (cheerleaders), the B group (drama club) and the C group (nerds). Romy and Michele were none of the above. Ridiculed as "the weirdoes," they were constant targets for abuse. Even though they were quite attractive, they had so much fun being together that they did not care about the others. That they make their own outlandish clothes helped keep the wall around them.
Complementing Romy and Michele's lightness, is Janeane Garofalo as the dark, pudgy Heather Mooney. Heather, who invented a new cigarette paper for cigarettes with "twice the taste in half the time for the gal on the go," has the success and the money that they would like. Heather was even more of an outsider than they were in high school. Garofalo's one-dimensional role is only a side show. This is a two person film with the other characters there merely for the two leads to bounce their lines off of. The genuine chemistry between Sorvino and Kudrow makes for a sweet and sometimes touching comedy. They have so much fun acting out their parts, their enjoyment spreads to the audience. Grade: B, ***1/2 out of *****
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