Yesterday's Movies

Before watching the movie:

This is probably a surprise entry for the month. I always wanted to include Romy and Michele and I’m not sure why they came to mind with the others. Possibly because one of the most notable images associated with the movie is the two women in a convertible, something also strongly associated with another iconic title duo.

I first learned of this movie’s existence from a podcast interview with Kudrow, who discussed how she’d done a pilot based on a play she’d been in that didn’t get picked up right before she got cast in Friends, and if that pilot had sold, then Friends wouldn’t have happened for her, but without the success of Friends, this movie based on the same characters from the play wouldn’t have gotten made. I have the vague idea that it’s about the pair realizing on the occasion of their ten-year reunion that they haven’t made much of themselves, but I don’t know much more and I’m mainly drawn to it because of how much it seems to mean to the actors and to the cult fanbase.

After watching the movie:

Romy White and Michele Weinberger were best friends in high school growing up in Tuscon, AZ dreaming of moving to Los Angeles, and now they’re best friends living together in Los Angeles. Romy is the cashier at a Jaguar service dpeartment and Michele doesn’t work, and the two spend their free time mocking TV together and making themselves very loud dresses. A misanthropic old classmate, Heather Mooney, happens to come through Romy’s line and mentions the upcoming ten-year reunion, and Romy and Michele plan to go to see how everyone ended up (hopefully less successful than they are). Looking back at their high school experience, they realize they didn’t really have other friends and mostly interacted with the “A-group”, some mean popular girls lead by Christie Masters who picked on them, while Romy had a crush on Christie’s boyfriend Billy Christianson and Michele was always blowing off geeky Sandy Frink who had a big crush on her. Sitting down to fill out the “where are they now” questionnaire ahead of the reunion, they also have to take stock of their lives and realize that being single roommates, one a cashier and one unemployed, isn’t very impressive for showing their classmates, and decide they have to come up with a way to make themselves more impressive by next week, but the drastic measures they take might not leave their friendship unscathed.

This is a really campy and offbeat comedy telling a fairly traditional story. At one point it strays really far from realism, but that turns out to be more justified eventually. It’s ultimately a story celebrating being yourself to the fullest and not letting other people get in your head, with a side of healing high school trauma. Romy and Michelle are not too bright, but what they are is happy, until they start comparing themselves to the people who didn’t even like them in school anyway. It’s mostly just playing with high school stereotypes in a quirkier and darker way than usual, a bit like a less violent Heathers.

I’d thought that both of the characters were reprised by the original actors, but it seems that only Kudrow had the star power for a movie. Romy and Michele are also not the focus of the original play “Ladies Room”, but I think they’re the center of the unsold pilot. This movie got written because Touchstone wanted the writer to make “Ladies Room” into their female counterpart to Wayne’s World, but she didn’t think it would adapt well and wrote about the breakout character valley girls having a high school reunion-life crisis instead. More recently a prequel has been made, which sounds like it’s retreading worn material, but it was written by the same person so maybe there’s something to it. It’s also part of the trend of turning successful movies into stage musicals that make you say “they made a musical of that?”

Along with the offbeat humor, what makes this movie sparkle is the soundtrack dominated by evergreen 80s and 90s pop hits, including a show stopping number to “Time After Time”, which they spent a full tenth of the budget to license. I don’t know if I would’ve gone that far for a single song, but they really believed in that moment.

This movie is a lot of fun and a little cockeyed. It manages to take some very traditional messages and make them fresher than most stories achieve. And they do it all while showing off a truly unique fashion sense that’s altogether “Not Bad”.