Better Late Then Never

An absolute waste of money

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There's something about "Peggy Sue Got Married" that really stuck with me. It's like when the premise and way the movie was made is written on paper, you think "There's no way this is going to work" but then it does. I was really surprised with how much this picture affected me emotionally.Kathleen Turner plays Peggy Sue Bodell, who is attending her 25-year high school reunion with her daughter Beth (Helen Hunt). Peggy Sue married right out of high school but now she and her husband, Charlie (Nicolas Cage) have separated. It's awkward enough answering the same questions over and over to the people that haven't seen you in decades but then her husband shows up and things go from bad to worse. She is nevertheless named "Prom Queen" and accepts the award, but when on stage, she faints. When she wakes up, she discovers that it's once again the spring of 1960. With her memories of the future, she tries to alter her past for the better. The film follows her as she rediscovers who she was at the time and tries to find a way to return to the present.There's something about this movie that really hits home. Travelling back in time and altering the past is a desire that in a way, everyone has. Sure people tell you that they wouldn't go back and fix their past mistakes because "those mistakes made them who they are" but come on, we all know the day you wake up in your high-schooler's body, the first thing you're doing is buying Baseball cards to stash away, warning people about 9/11 and meeting Elvis in person, before he gets fat. Peggy Sue seizes the opportunity to do that stuff right away, but then gets side-tracked when she realizes that this trip back in time can be a very emotional experience. With the body of a teenager and the mind of a mother, she reacts very differently to her own parents and realizes how much she missed being a teenager, or being in the same house as her mother, father and sister, or her grandparents (who have in present day been dead for some time). There's something really touching about that and it makes you think back at your own teenage years; if you could go back, who would you be nicer to, who would you appreciate more, who would you stand up to? Yes it would be awesome to return to a time where you could amass money and power, or change history for the better, but there is also something uniquely appealing about just being able to interact with the people from your own past and get a new perspective on what the world was like back then.One of my favorite moments in the film is when Peggy is talking to her then-boyfriend Charlie (Nicholas Cage). This isn't the same guy as he is years later. He's a nervous kid who is doing everything to impress her and is completely in love with the woman. He's anxious and vulnerable too. Check out the scene when Peggy, who now knows the man better than he does finds that she is once again, falling in love with him. She tries to initiate sex with him in his car, but the guy is so taken aback that he refuses and kicks her out. Isn't that what would really happen if you were confronted with someone that was 25 years older than you are, but was disguised as someone your own age? It's little moments like that that really make the movie because it doesn't feel contrived despite the outlandish premise, it feels absolutely genuine.Another element that really helps make you buy into this whole situation are the performances. With excellent costumes and makeup, we have Jim Carrey, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Catherine Hicks and others playing both adults and teenagers and the effect isn't perfect, but the performances sell them. Some of the people I was watching with found that Nicolas Cage as Charlie had a pretty irritating voice when he was 18, but I found that it was very believable that he would have a goofy, nervous voice when he was younger. I'm pretty sure if I looked at any recordings of myself at that age, I would have been pretty annoying too. The actor that really needs to have the spotlight on her is Kathleen Turner, who does a fantastic job. There's almost an implication that while inside the body of her 18-year old self, her mind goes back and forth between the maturity of her older and younger self. She pulls it off not with words, but with subtle changes in her face. Any scene where Peggy Sue is interacting with her mother contains many subtle nuances and although it seems impossible, the 32-year old actress convincingly plays a teenager. It's a spectacular performance and you're an aspiring actor/actress you need to check it out and study this film so get yourself a good DVD and start wearing out that fast forward and rewind button.It might take a bit of time for you to warm up to it, but there's something really special about this film. I love any story that has to do with time travel because of the moral implications, the possibilities and the dangers that are associated with it. In this case, it made me think about traveling to the past in a whole new way. I still think I'd go back in time to stop Skynet first, but I'd certainly make a point to visit my past because of my experience watching the film. This is the kind of movie that you watch and enjoy both for the technical aspect and the story. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing it again. (On DVD, January 28, 2014)

Peggy Sue Bodell attends her 25 year high school reunion, only to collapse and be transported back to 1960, her senior year. The more she wants to change things, the more she discovers that she makes the same choices as she did before, with a few adjustments. Although she starts by wishing she was a free spirit, and the desire to run away with the local bad boy, she discovers he wants to be a polygamist writer whose wives would take care of chickens for their income. This is at odds with her personal values and she realizes that she is not what she thought she was. There is more self-discovery in this movie than there is learning about those around her, but she does pick up some lessons from them along the way.A side note: I noticed on one review that I read someone was using the scene with Peggy's mother having her jewelry appraised to indicate that she was becoming an independent woman in the early days of the women's movement. I interpreted it that Peggy's parents were dealing with the same problem that led to Peggy and Charlie's problems, which she says herself - "house payments"! Her father owns a hat shop, a business which is surely on the decline at this time, foreshadowing family financial catastrophe in the years ahead. Did anyone else think this, or was there something else going on in your opinion?

Francis Ford Coppola has been one of my favorites. He has crafted a number of spectacular movies, but this is not one of them. Turner is dull in the lead performance and the story has nothing new to do or say. It does not even find a way to recycle the clichés. It ends up uncreative and dull. The supporting performances are just as bad, lots of campy acting. Never has a Coppola movie ever been so boring or so stale in its conveying of plot elements. It tries to be likable but ultimately falls flat on its face. do yourself a favor and watch any other Coppola movie- even Jack over this one. Sofia Coppola is just as miscast as she would later be in The Godfather: Part III.

The first time I saw this movie, I was very inexperienced, as far as relationships and everything else. The movie bugged me, I did'nt appreciate it at all. But tonight watching it as someone who has now lived through much of what Peggy Sue did, I totally enjoyed the movie. The main message of this movie is to live in the present, and not to think so much about the future. Unfortunately in our current world, we tend to think about the future too much, to the point of not living in the moment ever hardly. This is why this movie resonated with me so much this time around. But I did find it irksome how old everyone looked, most of the cast were well over twenty playing teens. But their performances were pretty good. I remember really not liking Nicholas Cage for around ten years after this movie, I found his nasally falsetto voice very irritating. Now days he is one of my favorite actors. He still seems to be pretty much a regular guy and that is a quality I think a lot of the stars lose pretty quickly after a certain amount of time at the top.