My Girl 2 (1994)

"It's not easy being a woman!"

It's sometimes good to see and blog a film not in the usual genre, without all the explosions and CGI I'm used to, and see a nice little 90 minute drama about our old friend Vada and her dad, stepmum and soon-to-be baby sibling. No Thomas J for obvious reasons, so no Macauley Culkin to provide a big name '.this time; we'll have to make do with Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd. Still, I'm not sure Macauley Culkin was still a thing in '94 anyway.

It's interesting that this isn't, given the absence of Thomas J, really a direct sequel at all but rather a tale of Vada, a couple of years older, travelling to Los Angeles to research her late mother and to undertake a sort-of romance with the awkward and very teenage Nick. In its quiet way it's a nicely done drama, with Vada's search for answers providing a nice structure to it all.

The script and acting are both superb, and there's just enough wallowing in the fact it's 1974 to be fun without overdoing it. There are some nice cameos with Aubrey Morris as a jaded, elderly poet ("Don't be a poet. Be a TV repairman.") and Keone Young as a nerdy cop. A quietly satisfying sequel that's just as good as its predecessor.

My Girl (1991)

"Feel my aura!"

"I don't think I'm allowed to..."

Just to make it very clear; the wife cried. I didn't. Heart of stone. I deny everything.

This is a nice little coming-of-age story starring a very young and brilliant Anna Chlumsky (who I only know, much older, from In the Loop), a typically charismatic Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd playing against type as man whose approaching middle age seems set to be defined by his underlying sadness and mild neglect of his delightfully full-of-life daughter, and Macauley Culkin, that walking advertisement that being a child star doesn't always end well.

The whole thing hangs on Vada's unique personality- a hypochondriac, terrified of the dead bodies she sees all the time, what with being an undertaker's daughter, and bring rather brighter than her peers- and that in turn hangs on the young Anna Chlumsky, who really makes this film. As does, yes, the sad twist, which hits like a sledgehammer.

This is also a nice little glimpse into the middle America of 1972, with hippies at the creative writing class using phrases like "right on" without irony and phrases like "women's lib" being hurled around. This isn't a big film, but it's a pleasant way to spend ninety minutes.