Now And Then movie review & film summary (1995)

The adult actresses are completely superfluous to the movie, which is a contrived "Stand by Me" kind of story. Although the screenplay isn't much help, the four young actresses (Christina Ricci, Thora Birch, Gaby Hoffmann and Ashleigh Aston Moore) are wonderfully talented and would have been completely capable of filling the screen time without the guest appearances. In theory we might be interested in seeing what kind of women the girls grew up to be - but the movie gives the adults so little screen time that it has to resort to shorthand, like using smoking as a character trait.

The story takes place in an idealized subdivision where the girls have pooled their money to buy a treehouse from Sears (the price, $129 in 1970 dollars, buys them a cottage that is still standing 25 years later). Their imaginary lives are hyperactive; led by Samantha (Hoffmann), they venture into the cemetery one night for a candlelight seance, and develop a fascination for "Dear Johnny," a boy who died young in the 1940s.

It is the summer they first begin to wear bras. Roberta, the tomboy, tries taping down her budding breasts, but Tina, the future actress, uses baggies of vanilla pudding to stuff her bra (later she will brag about her boob job). The girls communicate by walkie talkie, share secrets and ride to the county seat on their bicycles to look through back issues of the paper for clues about Dear Johnny.

They find them, along with tragic information about the death of one of their mothers.

Needless to say they also deal with boys in the movie, especially the hated Wormers, a gang of brothers who make their lives miserable. It is more or less obligatory, I suppose, that they steal the Wormers' clothes down at the ol' swimmin' hole and get a glimpse of at least one Wormer penis.

Meanwhile, a recluse named Crazy Pete stalks the streets at night, and it takes the girls longer than anyone in the audience to discover his identity. For that scene, the film supplies one of those helpful storms that blow up whenever necessary, and a hokey scene in which a girl loses her bracelet and climbs down a flooding storm sewer after it. Watching this scene, I wondered what depths of desperation the filmmakers had arrived at in their need to create artificial tension.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46nprBlkaOxbsDHnqVmaWlugg%3D%3D