Beautiful Girls Details

A starry cast illuminates this high-school reunion movie, though the end result is rather disappointingly low-key and lacking in sparkle. Timothy Hutton is the New York pianist at a crossroads in his life who returns to his small-town roots and is depressed to discover that his schoolmates — including Matt Dillon — are stuck in dead-end jobs. If director Ted Demme's situations are stereotypical — the men mainly talk about sex over beers — the film is made memorable by writer Scott Rosenberg's cutting dialogue, and his script here has the same sharp edge he brought to his earlier work on Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead. The women — Mira Sorvino and Uma Thurman among them — are mostly well drawn, but the bigger stars are upstaged by Natalie Portman as Hutton's intelligent and surprisingly mature teenage neighbour. The film remains involving to the end, but considering the weight of talent on board it should have been much better.

A single-minded ensemble piece, in which sex is relentlessly discussed; its cast is rather young for the prevalent repining for the recent past.