An outlier among Coppola's corpus, PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED is an echt high-school chick flick that jumps on the bandwagon of the “time-travel” fad jump-started by Robert Zemeckis' far superior BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985).
During the 25-year high school reunion, Peggy Sue (Turner) is so overwhelmed by old friends and memories that she faints on the stage when she is again crowned the “prom queen”, afterward, inextricably she wakes up in the year of 1960 , the senior year of her high school. She gets a chance to relive her teenage days and most importantly, an opportunity to reassess the relationship with her boyfriend Charlie (Cage), because 25 years later, their relationship is officially on the rocks.
Light on the scientific explanation (a surprising Freemason ritual is as far as the mystery goes), as Peggy Sue is not particularly a science geek like her classmate Richard (Miller), a nerd shunned by most of his classmates, but in time will become a billionaire inventor and elected as the “prom king” during the reunion (the vindication of a typical American dream for a wallflower), the movie feints at the potentialities that Peggy Sue can benefit from being back from the future (“pantyhose” is a loose end), whereas the meat of the story hinges on Peggy Sue's oscillation in whether or not she should break off with Charlie.
After a dally with the lone-wolf, poet-type cool guy Michael (O'Connor), who turns out to be a lunatic polygamist, Peggy Sue is designed to find some new perspective in Charlie that can embolden her to renew her faith in their union, and for that matter, the film nearly misses its mark, Charlie is the same old Charlie (Cage is too droll and wacky to pull a straight face as the straight arrow Charlie inspires to be, but the performance itself is a hoot and half), his love for Peggy Sue is genuine, but that doesn't mean it can resist the corrosion of life as she knows it, eventually, Peggy Sue capitulates to the same life orbit, but not much on her own volition than the movie's lazy prescription, tainted by its cheesy denouement, when she wakes again everything is just castles in the air (but ambiguity is implied by Michael's published poems).
It is somehow refreshing to see Turner earn her sole Oscar nomination to date with this romantic fluff (BODY HEAT's snub still hurts), but most strikingly, she has to turn a 40-something woman into a believable high-schooler with only minimal makeover in appearance, and not arouse suspicion when mingling with people who know Peggy Sue the teenager on a daily basis, a condition mitigated by casting a gaggle of 20-and-30-somethings as her classmates, it is nice to see those familiar faces like Cage , Carey and Allen, still filled with collagen, and a scrawny Sofia Coppola, the only real teenager in the picture. But the film is Turner's home turf, who jubilantly tones down Peggy Sue's worldly self-knowledge with genial amazement, vim and vigor, but speaking of the discernment of the opposite sex, that is, in evidence, not her strongest suit.
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