Mystic Pizza (1988)

Directed by Donald Petrie. Staring Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, Adam Storke, William R. Moses, Conchata Ferrell, Vincent D’Onofrio, Joanna Merlin, Porscha Radcliffe, Louis Turenne. [R]

Three young women just out of high school working at a pizza parlor in the small Connecticut town of Mystic—two sisters (Gish, Roberts) and a best friend (Taylor)—absorbing lessons in life and love. A quaint seriocomedy with obligatory plotting and superficial insight; has its moments, but virtually no resonance, and it’s too flawed to ever get off the ground. Some episodes don’t work at all, including a dinner scene where the family of rich preppie Storke snipes at the class and ethnicity of Roberts’ character, who’s his new squeeze (it’s doomed to fail even if rewritten simply because the actress doesn’t look even the slightest bit like the Portuguese-American she’s supposed to be); others are all-too-predictable in their cutesy resolutions, like the contrived reaction of a television food critic to the “Mystic Pizza” specialty. For a coming-of-ager, there are disappointingly very few scenes of the three main characters simply interacting with each other, whether just goofing off or digging deeper for insight, and instead spend most of the film apart from each other torturing themselves over drama with boys. Film debut for Matt Damon in a small role as the younger brother of the WASP boyfriend.

47/100