Dinky (15) is a straight A student in high school, but terrible at social relations. An outcast, she is also cynical towards her adoptive parents. When news hits the town that one of its inhabitants, Roxy Carmichael, who became famous for appearing in a popular song, is returning back for a visit after 15 years, he town people prepare for a huge event. Dinky is convinced that Roxy is her biological mother, and inquires about her with Denton, a man who had a baby with Roxy. Dinky runs away from home to buy a dress and prepare for the welcoming party. Unfortunately for the huge crowd, Roxy does not show up, and only sends a letter that she is thankful. Denton admits to Roxy that his and Roxy's baby died. Dinky thus accepts her town and gains a boyfriend, Gerald.
In between his cartoonish-wacky comedies "Top Secret!" and "Hot Shots", the director Jim Abrahams untypically directed this more 'grounded' comedy, and a dramatic one at that, that follows the unadjusted teenager Dinky, played wonderfully by Winona Ryder. "Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael" plays out almost like a forerunner to the "Daria" episode "The Misery Chick", except that it ends in an underwhelming, anticlimactic ending without much of a reward for the set-up, almost like "Waiting for Godot". One one hand, it is amusing observing how the people in the small town fall into the trap of a cult of personality of Roxy, who achieved semi-fame with a song and is now returning, raising their hopes that they can move out of this "insignificant existence" (a group of her former classmates practically compete in exaggerated compliments at Roxy, from her thighs up to her stockings, until the wife of one of them protests: "Are you in love with me or with Roxy?!"). But on the other hand, it does not connect with the main heroine Dinky, who for some reason thinks Roxy might be her mother, revealing her own feeling of insecurity and a need for something more in life. The film works the best in small 'slice-of-life' moments of its characters, including a funny love poem Dinky reads out in class ("From a deep, immaculate kiss, she spread her two ripe, dripping limbs. And then I happened."), up to teenagers throwing food at her shoulders during lunch break, or a guy licking his two fingers to go through and 'straighten' his two eyebrows. It is a quiet little film about outsiders who grow up into a more mature, social version of themselves, yet it is sometimes boring and not that well constructed in its meandering storyline.
Grade:++
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