Product: Peggy Sue Got Married [VHS] (1986)
Rating: 3.0
"I Have Too Many Unresolved Relationships"
Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) is facing the prospect of her 25th high school reunion. Making it even worse, she and her husband, high school sweetheart Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage) are in the middle of a divorce because Peggy Sue has finally gotten tired of his affairs. And so she shows up with her daughter Beth (Helen Hunt).Things are actually going well until Charlie shows up. Then Peggy Sue wins homecoming queen. It's all too much for her, and she faints.When she comes too, Peggy Sue finds herself back in 1960. She's eighteen again and reliving the last few months of high school. Between panic attacks about what this could mean, she tries to grasp her second chance at her life. Can she avoid the last 25 years of pain? Does she really want to?The movie walks a fine line between comedy and drama and never quite seems to strike the right balance. There are some very funny bits, but those just make the drama seem more over the top and over wrought. And the comedy is stuff we've seen done elsewhere better many other times.The cast features a number of early performances from actors better known today. Besides the ones already mentioned, we see Jim Carrey and Joan Allen, for example. Most of the cast is fine. My biggest problem was with Nicolas Cage. For some reason, he gives Charlie a weird nasally voice. Frankly, it makes me wonder what Peggy Sue ever saw in him. On the plus side, he gets to show off his excellent singing voice.Finally, there's the story. It works. But it is left too open ended. That's probably caused by an ending that is way too abrupt to deal with everything brought up. It asks all kinds of questions, but the answers are thrown at us so fast it doesn't really explain how the characters arrived at them. As a result, the ending goes from being open ended to unsatisfactory.The movie isn't bad, but it's really not good either. It's certainly fun watching if you are a fan of the current work of this young cast. But if you haven't seen it, you haven't really missed much, either.