Imagine Kim Novak and Marilyn Monroe in their movie prime, suddenly possessed by the souls of Laurel and Hardy and dropped full-blown into a Venice Beach apartment, and you’ll get some idea of the giddy delights in store when Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow pair up in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.”
This is a comedy match made in heaven (or at least in some nifty purgatory). Playing a couple of cheerfully semi-air-headed party girls who undergo a mid-20s crisis when they’re invited back to their 10-year high-school reunion, Sorvino’s Romy and Kudrow’s Michele generate such zephyrs, breezes and full-scale gales of hilarity that you can crack up just remembering the way they walk into a room together.
These bombshell bosom buddies — borrowed by screenwriter Robin Schiff from her stage comedy “The Ladies’ Room,” where they first sparkled into life a decade ago — are a pair of supremely good-natured and heart-warmingly ditzy twentysomething blonds. Friends from high school who share Venice digs, they hold down various clerical or waitress jobs or collect unemployment checks: daily routines that are only a prelude to the serious business of shopping, dressing up and doing the town.
Superficial? Romy and Michele’s lives may revolve around the pursuit of L.A. “fun,” but they go at it with inspiring dedication and effort. Despite their short-skirted hot pink, fire red and sunshine yellow wardrobes, they’re not pushy, brassy, mercenary or cynical.
In a way, they’re sweet and easily hurt: high-school misfits who blossomed after they left their hometown. And that basic goodness is what makes them funny and lovable. They may be a beat behind some of the people around them, but their fresh California girl beauty and open-hearted smiles put them a beat ahead of most of the guys hustling them at the clubs. Laurel and Hardy were basically “very nice guys” (in Laurel’s words) who did silly things, and so are Romy and Michele.
Schiff, with the sterling help of TV vet and first-time feature director David Mirkin (“Newhart,” “Get a Life”), has imagined her best-loved creations forced to take stock of themselves when 10-year reunion time rolls around. Unlike John Cusack’s reunion-bound hit man in “Grosse Pointe Blank,” the girls have nothing to hide or brag about — except having a good time for 10 years.
Yet, like most ex-high-schoolers, Romy and Michele have bad school day memories, scores to settle. Neither was remotely in the “in crowd.” Instead, they were butts for the quartet of snobby cheerleader-nasty rich kid types who called the social shots: Christie (Julia Campbell), Cheryl (Mia Cottet), Kelly (Kristin Bauer) and Lisa (Elaine Hendrix). The nerd who liked them, Sandy Frink (Alan Cumming), didn’t ring their bells. Quarterback-hunk Billy (Vincent Ventresca) ignored them, while nuzzling up to mean Christie, with her Barbie Doll clothes and malice-filled grins. And school rebel Heather (Janeane Garofalo) was too busy smoking out back to offer any inspiration or example.
So, after a frantic last-minute round of trying to slim down and secure great jobs and/or boyfriends before the reunion, Romy and Michele decide simply to make the party dressed up as “businesswomen” (or their idea of the breed) and lie their dazzling heads off. Never mind that the lie Romy devises — that they are successful scientists and business executives who have invented the ubiquitous “Post-its” and reaped a fortune — seems a really risky proposition, even with a bunch of middle-class suburban tubeheads like Christie’s crowd.
Great American movie comedies are often hatched out of swindles or botched deceptions. And while “Romy and Michele’s” isn’t a great comedy (it slackens, drops off and gets a little mean itself at the end), it certainly has two great characters.
Mira Sorvino became everybody’s favorite with her new-style version of the golden-hearted dumb hooker in Woody Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite.” But I think she’s funnier and sexier here. She’s always good, but, in “Aphrodite,” her performance seemed more obviously constructed and designed, even a little stagey. Romy clicks both comically and dramatically. With her fluffy sweaters and look of wary concentration, she bubbles up naturally, gathering hearts and laughs like a bee getting honey.
As for Lisa Kudrow: Of all the highly touted buffed-to-the-max TV “Friends” alumni — making one unimpressive movie debut or breakthrough after another — she’s the one who has struck real big-screen gold. Kudrow, a specialist in dream blonds with slightly loose screws, was terrific as Albert Brooks’ nightmare date in “Mother.” And she’s better than terrific here: a comic guided missile with wonderful slightly dazed looks and perfect delayed-reaction timing.
In terms of sheer humor, Sorvino’s Romy and Kudrow’s Michele are first cousins to those classic party guys from the older, better “Saturday Night Live”: Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd’s finger-snapping “wild and crazy” Czechoslovakian swingers. (A meeting of that foursome might produce a comic meltdown.) The word chemistry doesn’t begin to describe what Sorvino and Kudrow share on screen in their con games, come-uppance and redemption.
The movie — well as it’s written, acted and directed — might justifiably be called a trifle, a light gag-filled romp on somewhat serious and touching subjects: the difficulties of trying to go home again, the perils of pretending to be more than you really are, and the joys and bumps of friendship. But trifles like this are what movies are often best at bringing us. And so are Sorvino and Kudrow, who should be making immediate plans to re-team for an opened-up version of “The Ladies’ Room.” Why wave goodbye after just one party? As Romy and Michele might say, they’re the “funnest friends” around.
”ROMY AND MICHELE’S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION”
(star) (star) (star)
Directed by David Mirkin; written by Robin Schiff; photographed by Reynaldo Villalobos; edited by David Finfer; production designed by Mayne Berke; music by Steve Bartek; produced by Laurence Mark. A Touchstone Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:31. MPAA rating: R. Language, sensuality, nudity.
THE CAST
Romy …………………….. Mira Sorvino
Michele ………………….. Lisa Kudrow
Heather ………………….. Janeane Garofalo
Sandy Frink ………………. Alan Cumming
Christie …………………. Julia Campbell
Cheryl …………………… Mia Cottet