Beautiful Girls (1996)

Genres

Comedy, Drama, Romance

Director

Ted Demme

Country

USA

Cast

Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Noah Emmerich, Max Perlich, Michael Rapaport, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Annabeth Gish, Lauren Holly, Rosie O'Donnell, Martha Plimpton, Natalie Portman, Uma Thurman, Mira Sorvino, Anne Bobby, Richard Bright, David Arquette, Sam Robards, John Carroll Lynch

Storyline

A group of friends reunite for their high school reunion in the small town where they grew up and they find themselves evaluating their lives and their relationships and forced to deal with reality.

Opinion

I saw this film on Natalie Portman's filmography and I decided to watch it. I had never heard of it, so I had no expectations whatsoever. Still, Beautiful Girls was able to surprise me. Maybe it's because of its rocky start, but I wasn't expecting it to be such a nice dramedy.

What stroke me the most about this film is the plot. Okay, maybe not the plot itself because there isn't much of a plot but something about it. The fact that this film tells a coming-of-age story of a group of adults. With a simple and clichéd plot, the film analyses what it means to become an adult and all the responsibilities and commitment that come with it.

I think the main reason this film works are the characters. They are flawed and yet unique and interesting. Some of them, the men, are quite unsympathetic because all their troubles are self-made. They complain about their lives but they don't do anything to make it better. They just don't seem to care to be in the world. And yet there's something about them, some sort of vulnerability that makes it very easy to relate to them, to understand their struggles and their insecurities about the future (it's probably more current nowadays than it was in the 90s).

Another nice thing about Beautiful Girls is that is a romantic dramedy from a male perspective which makes it a little more interesting and less ordinary.

My favourite part though is the performances. They are sublime, especially from Natalie Portman (which made me extra happy) and Michael Rapaport who steals the show with his comedic performance.