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Created Dec 20, 2013 12:09AM PST • Edited Dec 29, 2018 09:11AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Beautiful Girls & Butthead Guys should be this movie’s full title. Emotionally stunted and beer powered, the guys of Knights Ridge, Massachusetts haven’t changed much since High School, notwithstanding the random wife, another guy’s wife and the girls they can’t bring themselves to commit to. It’s a perfect setup.

   Indeed, de facto High School reunion movies don’t get much better than Beautiful Girls. New girls Uma Thurmond and Annabeth Gish join former High School girl Lauren Holly, who competes with longtime girlfriend Mira Sorvino in trying to win the affection of Matt Dillon’s former High School King.

   Beautiful Girls is nearly every bit the movie Diner was, other than it clanks some more. The list of stars in the previous paragraph stands up to Barry Levinson’s cast, as does the filmic depiction of a band of brothers who shared boyhood together. The male bonding thing? These guys got it out of the way 25 years earlier.

   Speaking of moviestars…

   Natalie Portman delivers an indelible performance, one that’s deliciously precocious – Supercalifragilisticly Precocious. “Romeo & Juliet, the dyslexic version” is just one of her über-clever quips.

   Speaking of laughs, Rosie O’Donnell is very funny, albeit acidic as usual.

   33 minutes in and Uma walks in the bar. Everybody stops and stares. It’s that kind of a movie. The kind with several Oh Shit moment, like when the gorgeous mistress walks into the leading man’s birthday party. Another on the date that Uma goes on with the dipshit.

   Some bad tunes and clanky comedy hold it back a bit, but not by much.

   Beautiful Girls is one hell of a great movie, especially of the home town High School Reunion variety.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Matt Dillon’s Tommy ‘Birdman’ Rowland holds down the center of the movie, Alpha Male in the middle. Want to see what a Leading Man looks like? Matt Dillon’s Birdman in Beautiful Girls

   • Lauren Holly as Darian Smalls, Former High School Queen to his King. She still craves him, notwithstanding being married to someone else.
   • Sam Robards as that someone else, her cuckholded husband
   • Mira Sorvino as Sharon Cassidy, the Birdman’s hopeful girlfriend.
   • Timothy Hutton as Willie Conway, sad piano player returned to his small hometown, defeated
   • Annabeth Gish as his lovely and amazing girlfriend: more talked about than seen
   • Natalie Portman as a girl named Marty, in a glistening performance that ranks amongst the greatest of her great performances, made when she was a girl of 15. There’s proof in the nearby video.
   • Noah Emmerich as ‘Mo’ Morris, stolid dad
   • Max Perlich as Kev, the weird little friend.
   • Michael Rapaport as Paul Kirkwood, alcoholic dipshit
   • Martha Plimpton as Jan, his long suffering girlfriend
   • Uma Thurman as the hottest girl anyone had ever seen, named Andera
   • Pruitt Taylor Vince as ‘Stinky’, owner of The Johnson Inn, complete with a PBR sign out front
   • Rosie O’Donnell as mouthy Gina Barrisano, female advisor around town
   • David Arquette as weird Bobby Conway, Tim Hutton’s drunkard brother
   • Lucky the Saint Bernard as “Elle Macpherson”, the alcoholic dipshit’s dog

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Ted Demme had one his biggest directorial successes with Beautiful Girls, working from Scott Rosenberg’s knowing script. Relationships are the focus: relationships forged through male bonding, female bonding and male-female coupling, most of them now frayed by two decades of adulthood.

    The guys are emotionally stunted, most of them. The girls are mostly smarter, albeit not a whole lot wiser, other than the little girl, who is the smartest of them all.

    Starts well, with a great opening leaving NY, then moves to small town Massachusetts. (Edina, Minnesota stands in for Mass.)

    The Kids are Alright poster and sounds of early Sportscenter add to the verisimilitude.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Ted Demme died of an “accidental cocaine induced thrombotic heart attack” shortly after releasing Blow, his other great movie. Whodda thunk it.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Brothers can’t hug, just one of many telling details.

    “Alcoholic high school shit for brains” is one terrific closing line.

13. Music Good 3.0

    The music is very random. Killer tracks from A Flock of Seagulls, The Spinners, Jethro Tull and The Rolling Stones are dragged down by poor choices and a perhaps intentionally bad bar band.

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.9

    More nasty than anything.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Fierce 2.4

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.7

23. Biological Glib 1.3

24. Physical Natural 1.0