Ted Demme’s cult favorite has a lot to answer for: kicking off a wave of Gen-X high-school reunion movies, launching Natalie Portman’s transition from jailbait nymphet to Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and even helping to popularize “Sweet Caroline” as an anthem for Red Sox Nation. Still, despite all that, and despite the movie’s endless boy’s-night-out vibe, it manages to capture a wistful, elegiac sense of fleeting youth. Credit the sensitive performance of Timothy Hutton (as a New York not-so-bigshot returning to his Massachusetts hometown), or the icy winter visuals (talk about your Big Chill), or the spot-on dialogue Scott Rosenberg wrote for the mooks and the women who put up with them.
The movie’s centerpiece is a scabrous monologue by Rosie O’Donnell, calling the guys out on their porn-fueled sexism and unreasonable expectations when it comes to sex and relationships. The guys deserve it, too, but here, their romantic and sexual fantasies stand in for all the unfulfilled desires and immature dreams of their rapidly-fading young adulthood. These are men who really need to grow up, and not just in the way they relate to women.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMIO48oFmHc]