My Girl 2

Last night I was reading a very dark book and needed something happy before I went to bed, so I got on Netflix to see if there was anything cheerful on Instant View (Netflix Instant View is one of the greatest inventions/services ever). I meant to watch The Sandlot, because I think everyone in the world has seen it but me. But I'd have to get that one in the mail, so I opted instead for My Girl 2.

Yeah, I know. Why would an intelligent young working woman want to see a movie like that? I saw My Girl the original back when I was twelve--we actually rented it for my sleep-over birthday party, and even though I was one of the only ones who hadn't already seen it, I was not the only one who cried when Thomas J died. But a recent blog post I read (Janeheiress) reminded me how much I liked some parts of that movie, and I looked up some reviews. It turns out that no-one ever expected the original film to do as well as it did. My guess is it had something to do with Macaulay Culkin's weird, very brief span of wild popularity among all sorts of folks. But customer reviews on amazon.com confirmed that the sequel is actually the preferred one, at least among die-hard fans. So why not watch it? I thought.

Anna Chlumsky definitely had charm, even though she couldn't cry realistically for the camera. She was just the right kind of cute, and Vada's voice-over narration had a nice blend of wise sarcasm and innocent sentimentality to make the story original enough. This was the sort of movie people could still get away with making back in 1994, before it was impossible to give any innocence and charm to a coming-of-age story.

If I were to watch it again, I would probably cringe at several things, including pretty much every line that came out of the mouth of her new little boy-friend. So even though it's not a keeper, I'm glad I saw it. And the music was good, too.