I feel like I say this a lot, but here I mean it more than ever … I don’t know why it took me so long to see this sequel to one of my all time shameless faves. Anna Chlumsky (or really I guess I mean Vada Sultenfuss, which is the only way I ever really knew her outside of The Mommy Market) was one of my first ever huge scary crushes, and this movie came out right around the time I would’ve still been into her, so I guess I probably needed someone to go with me for some stupid lonely reason and nobody else wanted to go, and I guess ever since, there’s always been something else more pressing. Add to all that, in at least the past 5 years as elderly cynicism riddles my mind, of course I’m never expecting it to be as good as the original that still makes me lose my breath crying, and I didn’t want it to ruin my great memory of it.

But some time last year or the year before, I’d been looking for a few quotes from the original and I found transcripts of both movies online – reading the first one forced me to finally buy the DVD, I’d forgotten how amazing Vada’s lines are in that movie; and reading the script to this part made me decide I really finally wanted to see it, ‘cos it seemed they’d stayed true to Vada. In a sense, now I’ve finally seen it, I can’t say I’m bitterly disappointed – there are some cute moments and they have stayed true to a lot of the good things about the original – but there’s definitely something missing, and it’s not as good as I wanted to be (I was really in another mood for a kleenex-soaking bawl, lol). They do, thank GOD, reference Vada’s loss in the first movie, but it’s not felt enough. I really think you should be able to feel the first movie in every frame of this part. There’s an argument to be made that Vada’s stronger than that, that it’s great to see her getting on with her life etc, but that’s not really coming across either. I’ll admit, it’s just a little flat, I guess.

But Anna Chlumsky’s still cute – she even wears that denim hat from the original which made me ridiculously excited for some reason lol – and the story does play closer to the heart than it could have … the very moment that Vada says she wants to do her project on her mother made me get ready to cry, and when she finally sees her mother on film is pretty beautiful too. I think anyone who got as close to this character in the first movie as I did will certainly get something out of the sequel – it’s amazing how you see her grow up while she’s watching the footage of her mom. The music selections are pretty amazing, too. I’m glad to say that it at least doesn’t sully the original. If anything, it makes it even better. I’ll be watching at the soonest opportunity, anyway.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 12:30 am in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.