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copyright ©1999-2002
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
In a small, snowy New England
town, struggling musician Willy [Hutton] has returned home from New York
City for his ten-year high school reunion. He doesn’t come back often
– life with his widower father and weirdo brother in this go-nowhere,
do-nothing town being just a tad depressing – but with thirty fast
approaching and his life at a standstill, Willy feels like he’s at the
crossroads. If he looks in one direction, he sees security, a marriage
to current girlfriend Tracy [Gish], a solid sales job, and the drudgery
of a sensible adult life. And in the other direction lies the eternal
promise of the dreams of youth: vague but beautiful, shining with the
allure of potential, crystallized in the snow-stomping, quip-talking
form of an extraordinary 13-year-old girl named Marty [Portman], who
lives next door to his dad. His old buddies – whether they’re as
aware of the dilemma as Willy is or not – find themselves faced with
similar growing-up quandaries. Tommy [Dillon] struggles with how to deal
with his mess of a love life – juggling a relationship with sweet
adoring Sharon [Sorvino] and an affair with his now-married former high
school sweetheart Darien [Holly], Tommy knows the right thing to do, but
can’t quite bring himself to part with that side of himself that
reminds him of his glory days. Model-obsessed Paul [Rappaport],
meanwhile, stubbornly and happily stuck in arrested adolescence, has
just gotten dumped by his long-time girlfriend, who’s finally given up
on waiting for a commitment and headed straight into the arms of a
40-year-old meatcutter. In short, they’re men trying desperately to
cling to the last vestiges of boyhood – and slowly, very slowly,
coming to terms with the idea that reality might not live up to their
teenage fantasies, but it can be beautiful all the same.
Review
Beautiful Girls isn’t so much about
beautiful girls, as it is about the boys who moon over them, so caught
up in the quest for some perfect-10, centerfold ideal of womanhood that
they barely notice the perfectly amazing real-world women who patiently
put up with all their can’t-commit, won’t-grow-up nonsense. More
generally, though, it’s a movie about that vast gulf that frequently
exists between adolescent dreams and grown-up reality – but what the
final message is regarding which one wins out in the end isn’t
entirely clear (this, to me, is what makes the movie interesting). It’s
funny, but while I’ve loved this movie from the first time I saw it
— I’m ever the sucker for a good character-driven, comedic-dramatic
ensemble piece, and with excellent performances by Timothy Hutton, Matt
Dillon, Uma Thurman, Michael Rappaport and a breathtakingly lovely young
Natalie Portman, along with some delightfully snappy dialogue and two
very memorable monologues, Beautiful Girls is certainly one of my
favorites — it used to make me sad to think that in the end, each of
the character’s settles for something somewhat less than s/he really
wants. The men settle for women less exciting than they might have
hoped; the women settle for men who aren’t smart enough to see their
many merits from the get-go, but instead have to be persuaded. They all
settle for the ordinary rather than chase the extraordinary; love is
nice, but not heart-wrenchingly romantic, comfortable, not exhilarating.
So maybe it’s a comment on which end of the quasi-adult continuum I’m
leaning towards these days, but when I watch this movie now, it seems so
obvious: it isn’t about resigning yourself to accept less than what
you thought you wanted, but about letting yourself be happy with the
wonderful things you already have. —reviewed by
Y. Sun
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