My Girl (1991)

My Girl is a family comedy about a girl who is a neurotic, compulsive liar.  The year is 1972 and she lives in a funeral home with her dad, her mum having passed right around the time she was born.  Governed by a maternal guilt complex, she treats her one and only friend Thomas J. like crap while pining for the love of her teacher.  Over the course of the summer, her dad meets Jamie Lee Curtis and the two of them really hit it off.  Naturally, she despises Ms. Curtis and she grows ever more distant, almost to the point of lashing out.  So funny!

What’s remarkable about this film is that it gets away with things you probably don’t see anymore.  There is a particular sequence where the girl joins a “creative writing” class so she can further lust after her teacher.  During that scene there is a weird love-triangle thing going on and she watches the teacher squirm as another, older, hotter hippie chick recite a dirty, dirty poem whilst basically touching herself.  Luckily, things don’t go much further than that; it was probably thrown in to pepper the story with some adult humor so your dad has something to look at.

Overall, it’s a decent movie.  It deals with death and loss on a level that kids may not understand completely when they are that age.  While not completely mind blowing, it’s still a powerful theme that I think resonates with that whole ‘cherish every moment’ cliche pretty well.  Just make sure they’re ready for the waterworks.

B