Mystic Pizza

Rating: R

Movie Release Date: October 21, 1988

DVD Release Date: January 9, 2001

Plot 411: Three friends struggle with love and life in small town Connecticut.

Review: This movie is like the female version of Diner, and it stars Julia Roberts as Daisy, Annabeth Gish as Kat and Lili Taylor as JoJo. The three girls are best friends (with Daisy and Kat being sisters) who work at a pizza joint in a small fishing town in Connecticut. They are all struggling with different identity crisises. Daisy feels threatened by her sister's impending departure to Yale and wonders about her future. Her way of dealing with this is to live up to her rep of wild nights. However, when she meets rich guy Charlie (Adam Storke) she dares to hope for a better future. Studious Kat envies her sister's carefree attitude and longs to fall in love. When she takes on a new babysitting job, she is drawn to her boss Tim (William R. Moses) despite his age and the fact that he's married. JoJo's problem is not the lack of a lover nor any doubt about her future. These are, in fact, her problems. After fainting at the alter, she isn't sure she's ready to marry her fiance Bill (Vincent D'Onofrio) and feels suffocated by her impending future. This is a great coming-of-age flick with which most girls will be able to relate. Small-town girls with big-city dreams is always a good theme. I really liked Gish's subtlety contrasted with Roberts' brash nature. And boy, did Roberts' have some big assets in this movie that I didn't notice her having before. She was J-Lo before there even was a J-Lo. Taylor was perfectly neurotic in her role, which made it all the funnier. We even get a peak at a very young Matt Damon in this movie.

Watch It: For a great '80s teen flick of doubt, soul searching and hormones.

Skip It: And go straight to Diner.

Shall We Dansu? / Shall We Dance?

Rating: PG

Movie Release Date: January 27, 1996 (Japan) / July 11, 1997 (USA)

DVD Release Date: February 1, 2005

Plot 411: A Japanese accountant takes dance lessons to meet a girl he sees from the train but discovers a whole new world.

Review: This movie was recommended back in January in a comment to my review of the 1937 Shall We Dance? I finally got a chance to watch this movie and thought it was great. The plot is completely different from the 1937 version though. There was a remake of this 1996 Japanese version in 2004 with Jennifer Lopez, Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon. The movie is about a guy who basically is a walking zombie. Despite achieving all that he desired, he still feels unfulfilled. On his way home every night, he sees a beautiful but extremely sad woman looking out of her dance studio window. He wants to meet her and finally gets the courage to go to the studio. He signs up for lessons so he can be near her (like many other students do), but when she calls him on it he decides to prove her wrong by continuing to dance. As he struggles to learn, he discovers that he is really passionate about it and it revitalizes him. Between the 1996 and the 2004 versions, I prefer the 1996 Japanese take on things. I think there's more of a personal struggle when the plot is set in the Japanese culture. It is more rigid and conforming in Japan than it is in America so it's a bigger deal for a man to break social and cultural tradition there.

Watch It: For a story about self-discovery and self-fulfillment.

Skip It: If you're looking for a lot of dancing. There's some but they aren't huge numbers like in the 1937 movie.

Trailer: