Synopsis
Lounge playing piano man Willie Conway (Timothy Hutton) scrapes together enough cash to pay for bus fare from New York home to the town of “Knight’s Ridge” for his 10-year high school reunion. Willie’s friends haven’t made it very far. Tommy (Matt Dillon) runs a plowing company, and clings to his glory days by sleeping with his ex-cheerleader girlfriend (Lauren Holly) while his current, loyal girlfriend (Mira Sorvino) suffers.

Paul (Michael Rapaport) is on thin ice with his girlfriend Jan (Martha Plimpton). He’s so obsessed with fashion models that he named his dog “Elle MacPherson”. He buys Jan a brown engagement ring and when she refuses to marry him, he buries her driveway in snow. The quiet Kev (Max Perlich) also shovels snow for a living, and aspires to do little but work all day and drink all night. Father and husband Mo (Noah Emmerich) is the only grownup.

The boys’ revelry is interrupted by Andera (Uma Thurman), a beautiful and cool Chicago native visiting her cousin “Stinky” (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who runs the tavern they drink at. Willie’s girlfriend and maybe fiancee (Annabeth Gish) soon joins him, but the 29-year-old musician confides his insecurities to a beguiling 13-year-old named Marty (Natalie Portman). She suggests Willie wait to get married until he meets someone who excites him.

Production history
In the wake of Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, screenwriter Scott Rosenberg signed a deal with Touchstone Pictures. He’d turned in a treatment for his first assignment – Con Air – that the studio had to approve. Waiting a decision out in Boston as snow plows went by, it occurred to Rosenberg that there was “more action going on in my hometown with my friends, dealing with the fact that they can’t deal with turning 30 or with commitment.”

The Diner-esque script – which Rosenberg took a week to write – sparked a bidding war. Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott and Mace Neufeld were all interested, but the buyer ended up being producer Cary Woods and Miramax Films. Rosenberg worked on a dozen drafts with James L. Brooks. The director ultimately decided he didn’t have much in common with blue collar 30-year-olds from Boston, and dropped out.

Director Ted Demme – who wasn’t much older than the characters in the script – was hired. Billy Crudup, Matthew McConaughey and Vince Vaughn were considered for roles, but were unknowns at the time. With money to hire name actors, Matt Dillon was cast instead. Demme’s aesthetic inspiration was The Deer Hunter. Shooting on locations around Minnesota, he wanted Knight’s Ridge to look as worn down as and as frozen in time as possible.

Opinion
Despite hopes that the movie would be a hit – The Brothers McMullen was a sensation at Sundance, and the sitcom Friends was developing into a phenomenon – it opened quietly in February 1996. Beautiful Girls may be a series of insights in search of a story, amusing as opposed to funny, but it generates feelings of such good will that its ambiance binds the film and makes it work beautifully.

Mira Sorvino, Martha Plimpton and Annabeth Gish do have thankless roles, while Rosie O’Donnell enters, delivers an unprompted monologue, then exits. Clumsy as it may be, the film is very well cast, and less interested in developing its characters than exploring with how they relate at a particular moment in their lives. I loved the way Uma Thurman makes waves in the lives of the male characters, how each relate to her in their own goofy, childish way. In that respect, the film comes across as sincere.

Demme establishes a nice rustic atmosphere of bars, snow plows and frozen lakes. Not many films make me want to book a vacation with the characters like this one does. Whenever Natalie Portman appears, the film strikes gold. Her scenes with Hutton avoid getting either too cute or too heavy, and Portman’s charm goes a long way toward making Beautiful Girls so good. The film benefits from an excellent soundtrack, using “Beautiful Girl” by Pete Droge to nice effect.

Dan Jardine at Apollo Movie Guide writes, “It is the film’s great irony that the only truly interesting and intelligent character is that of 13 year old Marty (great performance by Natalie Portman). Her relationship with Willie is fascinating. Too bad it only occupies about 20 minutes of screen time; those minutes deserve to be surrounded by a better film.”

“The story’s nothing new and the plot doesn’t contain any surprises, but it does have engaging characters, some honest truths, and some very funny lines that make it worth checking out on a quiet afternoon,” writes Beth Ann Griese at In the Dark.

Lisa Skrzyniarz at Crazy For Cinema writes, “Though told from the male point of view, the ladies hold all the power here (which is true in real life as well), mostly because they already know what they want. They also have the strength to walk away. Both Portman and Thurman are entrancing, giving the film spark, intelligence and heart.”

© Joe Valdez