Peggy Sue Got Married

Peggy Sue Got Married; Fantasy comedy, USA, 1986; D: Francis Ford Coppola, S: Kathleen Turner, Nicolas Cage, Barry Miller, Catherine Hicks, Jim Carrey, Joan Allen, Kevin J. O'Connor, Lisa Jane Persky, Barbara Harris, Sofia Coppola, Maureen O'Sullivan, Helen Hunt

Middle-aged Peggy Sue, who separated from her husband Charlie, falls unconscious on her 25-year high school reunion - and wakes up as a teenager back in the 60s. A nice chance to again relive her live, except that she knows what will happen in the future. She once again gets an F in math, becomes a cheerleader, but decides not to start a relationship with Charlie and has a fling with Michael. She also asks one student to invent everything that is absent in the 60s. When she goes to visit her grandma and grandpa, she wakes up and realizes it was all a dream and she is back in 1986 and rethinks her relationship with Charlie.

Francis Ford Coppola once stated that he made a mistake directing "Peggy Sue Got Married" because he just wanted to make a commercial hit, yet it's gross at the box office was modest. Still, the case is not closed - even though it could have easily turned out to be a kitschy, silly comedy, in Coppola's hands it became a surprisingly decent, neat, sympathetic and even a little bit melancholic film in which nobody of the cast involved should be ashamed off. The story about the middle-aged Peggy Sue, played very well by Kathleen Turner, who returns back to her high school days as a teenager almost seems like a variation of the similar time traveling film "Back to the Future" yet it works on itself without problems and only towards the end do mistakes become obvious, mostly involving around the fact that she returned 25 years back in time yet didn't use her knowledge of the events to change something big, which leaves the potentials only half used - one of the rare examples of inspiration is when she tells her algebra teacher that she will never need algebra in her life because she knows so, yet many other possibilities were left out. Still, even in his weaker shape, Coppola is still a director who knew what it takes to make a good film.

Grade:++