Ahh...beautiful girls. Beautiful girls. As one character (played by the ever-annoying Michael Rapaport) theorizes, a beautiful girl is "nothing but bottled promise—the promise of a new tomorrow!" Oddly enough Ted Demme’s Beautiful Girls revolves little around the subject of beautiful women, but focuses on the promise of a new tomorrow—and does so to a middling effect.
Beautiful Girls is largely a slice-of-life tale detailing the means by which Willie (an able Timothy Hutton) transverses a sort of early-mid-life crossroads. He’s come to a point of ambiguity in his life: his career as a bar-pianist hasn’t quite panned out like he’d hoped and his successful lawyer/girlfriend of eleven months wants a commitment for which he’s not certain he’s ready. Just in the nick of time, comes Willie’s ten-year high school reunion—a time to visit old friends and sort out the mess of his life.
The film becomes an ensemble piece soon after Willie’s arrival home. We meet his old High School buddies (none of whom have had any motivation to leave their small town) and find they have problems of their own. Tommy (Matt Dillon)—much to the dismay of his present, long-suffering girlfriend (Mira Sorvino)—is hopelessly infatuated with Darian (Lauren Holly), his now-married, ex-High School sweetheart. Paul (Michael Rapaport) has just been dumped by his girlfriend of seven years (Martha Plimpton) for a meat-cutter because he refuses to commit. Beautiful Girls weaves in and out of these several stories sometimes with verve and sometimes without.
The most interesting of these stories is, of course, Willie’s own. Upon arrival to the house of his youth (now marred by the death of his mother a few years prior), he meets Marty (a sublime role essayed by young Natalie Portman), the 13 year-old daughter of some neighbors who have moved in since his own departure. Through a series of conversations chock-full of literary references (to Shakespeare, Milne, Nabakov, etc.) Marty develops a crush on Willie who remains sixteen years her senior and Willie begins to seriously contemplate waiting for this young sweetheart. As "dirty-ol’ man" as this might sound on paper, the audience, due to Portman’s and Hutton’s acting, is actually given a glimpse into what might drive such a fascination. The chemistry between Willie and Marty is undeniable and in fact, possibly stronger than that between Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney in Out of Sight.
Another aspect that added to the film’s quality was the manner of resolutions: though many loose ends are tied up in the final moments, like real life, many things (to the movie’s credit) remain unresolved. All told, Beautiful Girls hits in some aspects and misses in others, but shouldn’t be missed if for no other reason than to catch Natalie Portman and Timothy Hutton in fine form.
