Reunited and it Feels So Gab!

Werth: Hello, Wise!

Wise: Werth!  Welcome back from your high school reunion weekend!  How was it seeing your old school chums?  

Werth: On the whole, pretty darned swell. I haven't seen Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, but I assume my reunion was very similar... only with more Mike's Hard Lemonade—  

Wise: And less Alan Cumming in freaky make-up.  

Werth: Alan Cummings wishes he was in the class of '91. 

Wise: High school reunions have often provided fodder for great films, and one of my all-time favorites is Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).  Kathleen Turner plays Peggy Sue, a woman flummoxed by adulthood and by the infidelities of her husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage).  Despite her marriage being in shambles, she decides to attend her 25 year reunion.  After a few awkward encounters with barely recognizable old friends, Peggy is stunned to discover that she has been elected queen of the reunion, but when she ascends the stage to accept the honor, the lights and her confusion cause her to faint.  

Werth: Being married to Nicolas Cage would make anyone pass out.  

Wise: She wakes up only to realize that somehow she has been transported back to her senior year of high school.  At first she thinks she has died, but gradually she realizes that she has been given a second chance at figuring out her life.  She begins by telling off the mean girls in high school and informing her math teacher that she will never, in fact, use algebra ever again.  

Gradually, however, she starts to explore the possibilities her youth had offered but which she never explored until, ultimately, she must decide between the future she knows and the one she doesn't.  

Werth: I'd go for the one without Nicolas Cage.

Wise: The film is full of great performances, most notably Kathleen Turner's Oscar nominated Peggy, but also memorable turns from soon-to-be stars like Helen Hunt, Joan Allen, and Jim Carey, as well as established stars like Barbara Harris as Peggy's mother.  But the two most touching performances come from Leon Ames and Maureen O'Sullivan as Peggy's grandparents.  These stalwarts from the Golden Age of Hollywood both ground the film's emotions and allow for the supernatural flights of fancy that make the film's slippery chronology possible.  

Werth: Speaking of slippery, did Maureen wear her Jane costume?

Wise: Part of what makes Peggy Sue Got Married so moving is that it doesn't simply cater to nerd revenge fantasies or romantic pipe dreams; instead, the film is a meditation on the passage of time and the consequences of small decisions as they reverberate throughout the years. 

Werth: The consequences of a reunion are more deadly in the thriller, Thirteen Women (1932). Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) sends out a call to some of her old girl-schoolmates for a reunion dinner in Los Angeles. This gathering is not just an opportunity to catch up on lost time or to see how fat everyone's gotten. These women have all been getting their horoscopes mailed to them by renowned astrologer Swami Yogadachi, but recently "you will meet a dark stranger" has turned into "buy a funeral plot."

Wise: At least he didn't bake cyanide tablets into fortune cookies. 

Werth: Three friends have already been affected by these miserable missives and wound up dead or locked up. Laura hopes to convince her remaining friends that it's all hogwash, but when someone tries to poison her only son, she starts to get the heebie jeebies. As girlfriends and the swami himself drop like flies, it becomes obvious that someone else is looking into the crystal ball. And it is none other than former Eurasian classmate, Ursula Georgy (Myrna Loy). For Ursula, revenge for the "half-breed" taunting she received in school is a dish best served in your horoscope.

Wise: I'll take my Sagittarius extra spicy with a side of sticky rice. 

Werth: 1932 was a very Asian year for Loy because she was also cast as diabolical Fah Lo See in The Mask of Fu Manchu. Myrna Adele Williams was as whitebread as her birthplace in Montana, but somehow the studio contrived ways of turning her into an Asian femme fatale—and Loy made the most of it. 

In Thirteen Girls she is lithe in form-fitting, exotic gowns with eyes that are both wicked, sexy and pitiless. Like a cobra she glides into the lives of those she wants to manipulate, literally hypnotizing and using them to fulfill her righteous rage at these privileged girls who teased her mercilessly. 

Wise:Was this the prototype for Gossip Girl? 

Werth: While it sounds racially campy that the same woman who played Nora Charles is also portraying a "Hindu dame," Loy made Ursula poised and elegant without a silly accent or exaggerated mannerisms. It makes one wonder if young producer David O. Selznick could have re-imagined the character from Tiffany Thayer's "startling" book, dumped the race-baiting plotline and just let Loy be an evil white lady with a private school axe to grind.

Wise: But then she wouldn't get to wear all that dark eyeliner.

Werth: True. But as it is, Loy (and the always earth-ily charming Irene Dunne) make the silly plot of Thirteen Women a reunion worth going to.

Wise: I notice that Thirteen Women isn't available on DVD.

Werth: Perhaps by the time I go to another high school reunion it will be.

Wise: Luckily our readers will only have to wait a week to be reunited with the next edition of Film Gab!

Gab and Switch

Werth: Hi, Wise.  Would you mind grabbing this jumper cable?  

Wise: It depends on what you plan on doing next.  

Werth: The Jason Bateman/Ryan Reynolds comedy The Change Up opens today and I thought we could have a little fun if we switched bodies for the day and learned valuable lessons about each others' lives.  

Wise: You mean you want me to spend the day loving Joan instead of Bette?  

Werth: Exactly.  



Wise: Why don't we just discuss our favorite body swapping comedies instead?  

Werth: But just think how much more fun Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? would be.  

Wise: Freaky Friday (1976) is the granddaddy of the life switch comedies and stars Jodie Foster as teenage tomboy Annabel and Barbara Harris as her frazzled mother.  After a quarrel, they both wish they had the other's life, and suddenly (and with no explanation), they do.  Annabel spends the day contending with all the frustrations of running a house, while her mother has madcap adventures adjusting to the complexities of being a teenager.  Of course, this being a late 70's Disney film, the action devolves into chaos, a car chase of unlikely vehicles erupts and lessons are learned.  

Werth: Disney always wanted you to learn something. Look at That Darn Cat! (1965). 

Wise: Right, but Freaky Friday does have a lot of charm.  Based on the book of the same name, it was adapted by its author Mary Rodgers, daughter of legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, who also had a successful career writing music for the stage.  

Werth: Nepotism, I say. Nepotism.

Wise: Released the same year as Taxi Driver, Foster eschews the adolescent sexpot routine in favor of a fresh-faced earnestness that's sharpened by coming of age in a post-Betty Friedan world.  She's a star of the field hockey team and an ace in her photography class, but she still has time to indulge her crush on her neighbor Boris (Marc McClure).  



Werth: Who later played Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve Superman films.  

Wise: While Annabel is the central role in the movie, Barbara Harris makes the most of what could have been a dowdy hausfrau.  An early member of Chicago's The Second City comedy troupe, Harris had a successful career on Broadway before turning to film.  In Friday, she plays something of a stereotypical homemaker, caught up in housework and certain that Annabel would be much happier if she ditched dungarees for dresses.  

But the transformation has a subtle effect on her—at the least the way Harris plays it—because it liberates her perspective and she blossoms not just into a better mother, but a better human being.  

Werth: There are no better human beings in my favorite switch movie, which should please you because it stars Bette Davis.  

Wise: She's always the tonic for what ails me.  

Werth: Dead Ringer (1964) showcases the aging actress as not one, but two greedy ladies. In what was hoped to be a triumph of mid-60's technical and acting achievement, Davis played identical twin sisters Edith and Margaret.

Wise: I just hope the Olsen twins never hear about this.  

Werth: Edith is a down-on-her-luck bar-owner who runs into her well-to-do twin sister at the funeral of Margaret's husband. Of course, Margaret stole her now-dead hubby from Edith 18 years ago, and, of course, Edith is still sore about it.  

Wise: Of course.  

Werth: So, of course, Edith takes this opportunity to murder Margaret and switch identities.  

Wise: Um, of course?  

Werth: This whole movie is full of weird plot points. But what makes it truly watchable is Davis. After her comeback turn in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962),  Davis seemed to relish roles where she could be ugly. In this film she plays not only the greedy, spoiled sister, but also the greedy sister who wants to be spoiled. 

With a plethora of state-of-the-art '60's film tricks like doubles, voice-overs, reverse over-the-shoulder shots and split-screens, Davis smokes and vamps her way through this Doublemint feature. With total abandon, she screeches, pops her eyes, laughs grainily, and says lines like,"a wino" in her legendary patois, "a why-no!"  

Wise: Careers have been made on a lot less.  

Werth: Davis was never known for subtlety, but some of her post-Baby Jane movies took her performance to the level of camp, with only a few moments of genuine regret for murdering her sister visible in this performance. Despite that, Davis' iconic mannerisms are worth the watch—like when Edith creatively uses a red-hot firepoker to solve the quandary of how to sign documents like her dead sister.  

Wise: I'm assuming that doesn't involve taking a penmanship class. 

Werth:  Dead Ringer is one of those films that you can't help laughing at, unintentionally.  Still, you wonder if, while Davis was cashing the paychecks, she knew what she was doing—slyly winking at the audience as she took yet another drag from her cigarette. So you're sure you don't want to attempt my jumper cables idea?  

Wise: Why don't we just plan a double feature of Burnt Offerings and Trog?  

Werth: Fine, as long as we're back next week for more Film Gab.