Movie Review: Peggy Sue Got Married

Stars: 3 out of 5
Pros: Acting; moments from the early part

Cons: Nicolas Cage; ending

The Bottom Line:

For nostalgia fans

Has good moments and weak ones

Worth watching cheaply

"If I Knew Then What I Know Now, I'd Do a Lot of Things Differently."

Sometimes, I can see a movie for the strangest reasons. Such is the case with Peggy Sue Got Married. Why would I want to see this romantic dramedy? Because it was filmed at my high school. That was enough to make me glad I watched the film, but the film itself is hardly outstanding.

Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) is facing the prospect of her 25th high school reunion. Making it even worse, she and her husband, high school sweetheart Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage) are in the middle of a divorce because Peggy Sue has finally gotten tired of his affairs. And so she shows up with her daughter Beth (Helen Hunt).

Things are actually going well until Charlie shows up. Then Peggy Sue wins homecoming queen. It's all too much for her, and she faints.

When she comes too, Peggy Sue finds herself back in 1960. She's eighteen again and reliving the last few months of high school. Between panic attacks about what this could mean, she tries to grasp her second chance at her life. Can she avoid the last 25 years of pain? Does she really want to?

Okay, let's get the high school part out of the way first. Yes, I recognized just about every scene set in the high school. No, I couldn't tell you exactly which room some of the classrooms were, but all the outside locations looked familiar. That was definitely Santa Rosa High.

The school helped provide the perfect backdrop for the movie. We really spend almost all of it in 1960, and every detail was perfect. The costumes, cars, props, everything evoked the time period.

And most of the acting was good. The cast is actually rather fun because many of them are well known today. However, at the time they were unknows. Beside the three I already mentioned, we also get the likes of Joan Allen, Kevin J. O'Connor and Jim Carrey (and I wouldn't have recognized him had I not known he was in it.) As a closet viewer of 7th Heaven, I got a kick out of seeing Catherine Hicks playing one of Peggy Sue's friends.

The cast does a fairly remarkable job in this film. Kathleen Turner was nominated for several major awards for her job here, and those nominations were well deserved. Sofia Coppola has a bit part as Peggy Sue's younger sister. She's okay. I think I would have been more annoyed if she were a bigger part of the film. In fact, my biggest complain with the cast is Nicolas Cage. For some reason, he decided to play Charlie with a nasally voice. It makes him come across as a wimp and makes you wonder what Peggy Sue ever saw in him. On the plus side, he gets to sing and show what a great voice he has.

The movie tries to walk the fine line between comedy and drama and fails on both fronts. Yes, there are some funny bits and scenes, especially when Peggy Sue first wakes up in 1960. However, we've seen these jokes done better in other movies. When the movie tries to switch into drama mode, especially in the second half, it fails here, too. The comedy still going on around it makes these scenes seem over wrought.

Then there's the story itself. For the most part it works, but it has some major flaws. It introduces a character at the reunion who never shows up again. I kept waiting to hear more about her, and nothing ever comes of it. The worst part is the ending, which is too abrupt to really resolve anything. The story asks all kinds of questions, but the answers are thrown at us so fast it doesn't really explain how the characters arrived at them. As a result, the ending goes from being open ended (which I'm sure was the goal) to unsatisfactory.

The movie isn't bad, but it's really not good either. It's certainly fun watching if you are a fan of the current work of this young cast. And I got a kick out of seeing my high school on film. But if you haven't seen Peggy Sue Got Married, you haven't really missed much, either.