The Case for Dumb Comedies, Part 3
Here’s the latest, and the last, Dumb Comedy recommendation:
Best Dumb Comedy, Women’s Division:
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997)
I personally like to think this film as a mash-up of Dumb and Dumber (1994) and Thelma and Louise (1991).
The title characters, as incredibly attractive as they are, come off as quite dumb, and a lot of the humor issues forth from their general ignorance. The thing is: Yeah, these two aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they don’t seem to care. Unlike most characters in Dumb Comedy movies, there does not seem to be anything really wrong with them or missing from their lives. This is quite an unusual state of affairs for any contemporary Hollywood movie, let a lone a comedy, where the protagonist always has to have some sort of personal character flaw or other sort of heroic incompleteness that only the plot can fix.
Romy White (Mira Sorvino) and Michele Weinberger (Lisa Kudrow) are best friends and roommates.
The discord that kicks off the story involves the pair wanting to make a good impression at their ten year high school reunion, where as students they were marginalized and tormented by the popular kids. With comeuppance their goal, Romy and Michele set off to find boyfriends and good jobs. They fail at both. So they set off for Tucson in a borrowed, malfunctioning Jaguar, ready to pass themselves off to their classmates as two successful businesswomen who invented Post-It notes.
A lot of the humor is in the rapport between the two lead characters. You could call the level of their discourse completely ditzy, and you’d be right. But there is superb chemistry between the pair, and not just the superficial chemistry of being dynamite-looking L.A. blonds. Romy and Michele are true BFFs, and it becomes evident that they have developed a unique shared view of the world. You don’t see that many comedies with two female leads who aren’t trying to tear each other apart (Bride Wars), and it gives Romy and Michele a sweet center.
Another singular aspect of this film is it’s NOT a romantic comedy. It was a purposeful Dumb Comedy that happened to have women in the lead roles, and that needs to be commended. The Rom Com tsunami out of the studios in later years sidetracked this promising Dumb Comedy sub-genre. Cameron Diaz tried to get something similar going in The Sweetest Thing (2002), but that film suffered from being an unbalanced mix of Dumb Comedy, RomCom and a Farrelly Brothers-style grossout.
Lisa Kudrow, a former Groundling, has superb comic timing. As Phoebe in “Friends” she could drop killer punchlines with breathless ease. In this film she joined her comic instincts with her obviously native San Fernando Valley accent to it’s best advantage.
Mira Sorvino is East Coast (Tenafly, New Jersey) and had to fake the SoCal accent. She did it by dropping her voice low and drawling, which sounds quite stupid– So it works! Her timing wasn’t as supernaturally good as Kudrow’s, but she managed to create a character more likable than anyone she has played before or since (And yeah, she was fine in Mighty Aphrodite, but not likable, and stupid in the wrong way).
A sample of the dialog:
Romy: Swear to God, sometimes I wish I was a lesbian.
Michele: Do you want to try to have sex sometime just to see if we are?
Romy: What? Yeah, right, Michelle. Just the idea of having sex with another woman creeps me out. But if we’re not married by the time we’re 30, ask me again.
Michele: Okay.
(This bit above happens near the top of the film, which addresses, and dispenses with, that issue.)
Michele: Did you lose weight?
Romy: Actually, I have been trying this new fat free diet I invented. All I’ve had to eat for the past six days are gummy bears, jelly beans, and candy corns.
Michele: God, I wish I had your discipline.
The extremely cool real-life irony about this film is how smart the two leads are. Lisa Kudrow has a BS in Biology (a pre-med degree, basically) from Vassar and did clinical medical research, earning, according to Wikipedia, a “research credit… on the comparative likelihood of left-handed individuals developing cluster headaches.” Mira Sorvino, the daughter of Paul Sorvino, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, majoring in East Asian Studies. Need Smart Brain Make Dumb Comedy.
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion has an excellent supporting cast as well: Janine Garafalo, Alan Cumming, Camryn Manheim, and Justin Theroux. Twelve years old and still capable of delivering the sublime mental escape only a Dumb Comedy can deliver.
–Skot C.