Off the Shelf: Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion
My ten-year high school reunion has been cancelled. Or maybe it never existed. Either way, my surprising desire to find a show-offy dress and pay $50 to revisit the Benicia High School class of 1998 has been squashed, and all too soon.
It’s too bad, really. I made a pact with a friend that we’d go together. She even has a built-in date, and she still said she’d come with me. We were just dying to show up and tell everybody that we invented Wite-Out (Post-Its being taken, obviously), only to be caught in our web of lies and, as a result, create our own fashion line. You know, like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion? Anyone? Bueller? Ah, well. I guess we’ll have to save our plans for the twenty-year.
It’s too bad that Romy and Michele never picked up much of a cult following, as far as I can tell; the average “I’m the Mary! I’M THE MARY!” reference just doesn’t get the same recognition as a garden-variety “I think I’ve got the black lung, Pop.” You’d think the smart-girl demographic would have picked it up somewhere between Troop Beverly Hills and, say, Mean Girls, but it seems to have been wrongly relegated to Saturday Afternoon TNT Land (as opposed to Saturday Evening TBS Land, which is a gold mine, though I suppose those with lives might see things differently). The truth is that these blondes have been unfairly maligned, or at least ignored–they’re smarter than they look, with a plot and some actual jokes and a pleasingly silly perspective on the eighties, as well as a killer ballet rendition of “Time After Time.” Who doesn’t love “Time After Time”?
And so I’m here to say: Come on! Love the shiny dresses with marabou trim! Revel in the mean, popular girls getting their comeuppance! Order the Businesswoman Special! If you don’t have your own high school reunion, you can at least attend Romy and Michele’s. I think I will.
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino, Time After Time, reunions, high school reunions, Troop Beverly Hills, Mean Girls
July 9th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Thinking of potential high school reunions always makes me think of the Oingo Boingo song Sweat:
The cool boys bit the dust
They couldn’t take the pressure
The cool girls got knocked up
They only wanted to have fun
(Where did they go?)
They fell in love and suffered
(Where did they go?)
They picked up guns and hammers
(Where did they go?)
July 9th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
It’s weird. I know that I liked Romy & Michelle’s, and I know plenty of people who did as well, but I just can’t muster the energy to rewatch it.
I think it will live forever in the shadow of Grosse Point Blank.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Erik–
It pleases me that you think “high school reunions”….”Oingo Boingo!” Because who doesn’t? (Also, I bet there’s a LOT of Oingo Boingo going on at many, many reunions. Not kidding.)
July 9th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Brady–
You know, you’d think that having Grosse Pointe Blank sitting on my shelf staring at me, it would have made an equal dent in the reunion thoughts. But no. It’s great, though (admittedly, probably far better than R&M, but I’m trying to ignore the possibility of hit men at my reunion. If we were going to have one).