I blew off the high school reunion. It wasn't because I had a dreadful high
school experience (just a boring one), and it wasn't because I hated everyone
I went to school with. It's just that I hadn't invested very much emotion
into the thing. It was what it was, and now it's over; why go back?
Naturally, I've always wondered what would've happened if I had...Would I
have finally hit on that girl from my junior year chemistry class? Would
I have lorded my high degree of accomplishment and acclaim before all those
yahoos from gym class? Would I have said Thank you to my sophomore English
teacher?
Maybe that's why so many high school reunion movies get madewe've already
concocted the scenarios in our heads, so we enjoy seeing them on film. And
I must say that Gross Point Blanke is the best of the
lotit's funny, sophisticated, and doesn't take any cheap shortcuts.
John Cusack stars as Martin Blanke, a high-strung fellow who happens to be
a professional assassin. But he's not very happy about itin fact, he's
starting to feel like maybe killing people for a living isn't for him anymore.
Thus, he decides to attend his high school reunion in search of the girl
he left behind (Minnie Driver), perhaps to rekindle the romance and figure
out who he is. Meanwhile, a contract is put out on his own head. Sounds like
it could be terrible, but Grosse Pointe Blank has such a delicious
sense of black humor in its whip-smart dialogue that it's a delight. Even
Dan Aykroyd, as a competitive contract killer, is a hoot.
That's more than you can really say for Romy and Michelle's High School
Reunion, despite its amiable silliness. Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow
co-star as airheads who try to pass themselves off as successes at their
high school reunion (they invented Post-Its!). And that's the entire plot.
If, perhaps, their shenanigans were truly inventive and sly, we could laugh
along with them as they make fools of themselves. But they aren't. Sadly,
what we have here is an attempted character study about two really, really
stupid people doing really, really stupid things. This might work for Jim
Carrey and his elastic face, but it doesn't work for two actresses who should
have known better. This is yet another movie-length skit that should've stayed
right where it wasat just under 10 minutes.
Finally, if you want another dose of high school has-beens, there's
Beautiful Girls with Matt Dillon and Timothy Hutton. A fairly
charming look at small-town bozos who never made much of themselves, it has
some witty bits of dialogue and some nice acting (look out for Natalie Portman).
This is somewhat offset by the characters' slavish worship of Uma Thurman
(all their problems could be solved if they could only sleep with her!),
which doesn't amount to much of a life lesson. But what did you expect from
high school?