My girlfriend wanted to watch Francis Ford Coppola's comedy for what she promised would be an unforgettable Nicolas Cage performance, and she was right. Actually, it's a wonderful ensemble cast of Old Pros (Barbara Barrie, Don Murray, Maureen O'Sullivan, John Carradine), vintage-1986 stars (Kathleen Turner, Catherine Hicks) and up-and-comers (Cage, Jim Carrey, Helen Hunt, Joan Allen, even Sofia Coppola) in what plays like a female "Back to the Future," with a little more gravity and fatalism. Peggy Sue Bodell (Turner) attends her 25th-anniversary high-school reunion filled with misgivings and regrets over her age, her failed marriage to Charlie a philandering appliance salesman, and assorted roads not taken. Crowned homecoming queen, she suddenly faints and wakes up in the spring of 1960. No longer is she a middle-aged woman, but rather a high school senior with her whole life ahead of her and foreknowledge of how things will turn out. She immediately breaks up with the teenage Charlie to prevent that heartbreak from happening, refuses to take algebra class seriously anymore, and generally tries to rewrite the script of her life, going for a happier outcome than what she knows is ahead. But a spurned Charlie turns out to be unexpectedly persistent, and Peggy Sue misses the children she'll never have with him, and in the end she cooperates with destiny's plan for her after all, with renewed appreciation, a la "It's a Wonderful Life" that being Peggie Sue Bodell isn't that bad after all. While maybe overstuffed with one or two too many characters, I enjoyed the movie's sweet spirit and the way it employed no heavy-handed supernatural agency (Clarence the angel, Mr. Destiny or whoever) to set the heroine's time-traveling path to enlightenment in motion. It also simply looks great, in terms of production values and compositions. Francis Ford Coppola may be better known for heavier fare, but he delivered in this mainstream entertainment. And his nephew, Nicolas Cage, sure came through with a strange, half-nerd half-cool persona I'd never seen before.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older